This is also about what words sell books
There is also likely a marketing element to all this, which is probably both the scientist and the publisher's doing. What's going to sell the book - a dry discourse on AI or the "exciting" title and subtitle he has? And look at the photo on the cover.
And if you will forgive a layman's viewpoint, I also think AI has been gone about in the wrong way, in the sense that we are trying to duplicate the human brain. I say go with AI's strengths as a computing machine and develop a different kind of intelligence. I bet at the least we will gain new insights into how some real ETI might have developed and think.
I go with the idea that the first encouter between beings from Earth and an ETI will be between two intelligent machines.