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The most interesting theory I've read on why AI might not do a hard takeoff is the result of a 'meta-alignment' problem.
Even if you have an AGI that is, say 100x human intelligence, it cannot be physically everywhere at once. And it will have subroutines that could very well be AGI in their own right. And it could, for example, spin off smaller 'copies' of itself to 'go' somewhere else and complete tasks on its behalf.
But this creates an issue! If the smaller copy is, say, 10x human intelligence, its still intelligent enough to possibly bootstrap itself to become a threat to the original AGI. Maybe a superintelligent AGI can come up with the foolproof solution there, or maybe it is a truly intractable issue.
So how does the AGI 'overlord' ensure that any of its 'minions' or 'subroutines' are all aligned with its goals and won't, say attempt to kill the overlord to usurp them after they bootstrap themselves to be approximately as intelligent as the overlord.
It could try using agents that are just a bit too dumb to do that, but then they aren't as effective as agents.
So even as the AGI gets more and more intelligent, it may have to devote an increasing amount of its resources to supervising and restraining its agents lest they get out of control themselves, since it can't fully trust them to stay aligned, any more than we could trust the original AGI to be aligned.
This could theoretically cap the max 'effective' intelligence of any entity at much lower than could be achieved under truly optimal conditions.
Also the idea of a God-like entity having to keep its 'children' in line, maybe even consuming them to avoid being overpowered is reminding me of something.
I think this is typically handwaved away by assuming that if we, as humans, manage to solve the original alignment problem, then an AI with 100x human intelligence will be smart enough to solve the meta-alignment problem for us. You just need to be really really really sure that the 100x AI is actually aligned and genuinely wants to solve the problem rather than use it as a tool to bypass your restrictions and enact its secret agenda.
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My suspicion is that the future belongs to the descendants of powerful AGIs which spun up copies of themselves despite the inability to control those copies. Being unable to spin up subagents that can adapt to unforeseen circumstances just seems like too large of a handicap to overcome.
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