I think titles also follow the "the only goal of the first sentence is to make the reader want to read the second sentence" rule. If MIRI is pitching this book at bright laypeople, I think it's good to be a bit jazzy and then dismantle the Skynet assumptions early on (as it looks like this does).

If the goal is for it to be a technical manual for people in math and CS, I'd agree that anything that sounds like pop sci or Gladwell is probably a turn-off.

Of course, you could always have two editions, with two titles (and differing amounts of LaTeX)