If you are writing for a general audience, I think you lose most of that audience here:
But it’s not just nuclear risks we have to worry about. As Sun Microsystems’ co-founder Bill Joy warned in his much-discussed article Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us, emerging technologies like synthetic biology, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence may quickly become even more powerful than nuclear bombs, and even greater threats to the human species. Perhaps the International Union for Conservation of Nature will need to reclassify Homo sapiens as an endangered species.
If you are writing for a general audience, I think you lose most of that audience here:
Or at the very least, explain why self-replicating things are more dangerous.