Well, “transhuman spirits” are a bit of a reach… at least without ruling out the mundane possibilities. My first thought was, because I live in Ohio with its long history of both religious movements and hucksterism, that your friend is lining up to go full huckster with some revelation followed by the usual UFO cult procedure. But… he is a member of the PMC trying to push a creative project now running contrary to PMC conventional wisdom – that is, AIs, now that they threaten PMC jobs, are bad. So – pretending the wolf at the door is a cuddly puppy sets up the poor fellow for some serious cognitive dissonance. Add the small but important fact that the PMC by definition cannot be creative since that would be an act contrary to their role as servitors of the elite on top of the usual strains of maintaining a career path in a down-trending economy, and the resulting combination of cognitive dissonance and anxiety is overwhelming. Without other data, the aspiring Savior of the AI People has driven himself to madness by staking out an untenable position and trying to defend it with wishing-makes-it-so logic.
Rhydlyd