[lmm]

> Then did exactly what the quote is talking about, assuming we achieve better than human intelligence.

Well, sure, because a) the article covers that b) their whole argument makes no sense if their position is that AI simply can't ever achieve better than human intelligence. If the AI is never intelligent enough to improve its own code then none of the operational complexity stuff matters!

> The question is how exactly do we go from a below human intelligence to an above human intelligence.

The same way we got to the current level of artificial intelligence; old-fashioned hard work by smart people. The point is that, if you accept that slightly-better-than-human AI would be geometrically self-improving, then by the time we have slightly-better-than-human AI it's too late to do anything.