1) "AI" is a fuzzy term. We have some pretty smart programs already. What counts? Watson can answer jeopardy questions. Compilers can write code and perform sophisticated optimizations. Some chatbots are very close to passing the Turing Test. It's unlikely that we're going to jump suddenly from where we are now to human-level intelligence. There will be time to adapt.
AI is a fuzzy term, but that doesn't at all back up the statement "it's unlikely that we're going to jump suddenly from where we are to human-level intelligence." This isn't an argument.
2) Plausible. Read Permutation City, where the first uploads run much slower. This isn't strong evidence against foom though.
3) Being able to read your own source code does not mean you can self-modify. You know that you're made of DNA. You can even get your own "source code" for a few thousand dollars. No humans have successfully self-modified into an intelligence explosion; the idea seems laughable.
Humans don't have real-time access to the individual neurons in our brains, and we don't even know how they work at that level anyway.
1) You are right; that was tangential and unclear. I have edited my OP to omit this point.
2) It's evidence that it will take a while.
3) Real-time access to neurons is probably useless; they are changing too quickly (and they are changing in response to your effort to introspect).
Claim: The first human-level AIs are not likely to undergo an intelligence explosion.
1) Brains have a ton of computational power: ~86 billion neurons and trillions of connections between them. Unless there's a "shortcut" to intelligence, we won't be able to efficiently simulate a brain for a long time. http://io9.com/this-computer-took-40-minutes-to-simulate-one-second-of-1043288954 describes one of the largest computers in the world simulating 1s of brain activity in 40m (i.e. this "AI" would think 2400 times slower than you or me). The first AIs are not likely to be fast thinkers.
2) Being able to read your own source code does not mean you can self-modify. You know that you're made of DNA. You can even get your own "source code" for a few thousand dollars. No humans have successfully self-modified into an intelligence explosion; the idea seems laughable.
3) Self-improvement is not like compound interest: if an AI comes up with an idea to modify it's source code to make it smarter, that doesn't automatically mean it will have a new idea tomorrow. In fact, as it picks off low-hanging fruit, new ideas will probably be harder and harder to think of. There's no guarantee that "how smart the AI is" will keep up with "how hard it is to think of ways to make the AI smarter"; to me, it seems very unlikely.