This isn't actually news; the Coreboot guys have been trying to warn everyone to stay away from Core i-series chips for a while now for this very reason.
This page was created in 2014, and there have been alarmists and paranoids talking about it since well before then.
The thing is, even making use of Intel ME
legitimately is difficult; there are no public tools for using it and the private tools are obscure at best and cryptic at worst. People might complain about the "security through obscurity" nature of the beast but if the Coreboot guys can't get around it, I don't think we have to worry too much about random malicious coder A from Slovakia. (No offense intended to Slovaks.)
There's always the concern about government-issued malware, of course, but at a certain point I have to wonder; to what lengths are you willing to go to prevent being spied on?
The only reason anyone is talking about this right now is that a couple of scaremongering articles hit the mainstream (or at least, the mainstream tech audience.) Intel ME isn't new and while I'd love to see it gone, I find it highly unlikely. Aside from fodder for fun conspiracy theorizing, I don't think it has a lot of relevance to the majority of users. Ultimately I think nothing will change in your life if you just ignore it.