I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "straw man" here. The usual meaning is that to attack a straw man means to argue against a position that no one actually holds, but which is easier to attack than your opponent's actual position. The concerns about the long-term future of AI are real, actual beliefs held by serious people. At this point there's a respectable literature on the potential dangers of unconstrained, powerful optimizing agents; I linked a couple of examples. These arguments are well thought through and worth engaging.
By contrast, this article and many others are implicitly arguing against an actual straw man position, the position of "let's shut down AI research before it kills us all in six months", which no serious person on either side of this debate really holds (though it's understandable how someone who only read the discussion in the mainstream press could come to think this way).
By contrast, this article and many others are implicitly arguing against an actual straw man position, the position of "let's shut down AI research before it kills us all in six months", which no serious person on either side of this debate really holds (though it's understandable how someone who only read the discussion in the mainstream press could come to think this way).