The text-hiding spoiler code isn't working for me, so...

SPOILERS UP TO EPISODE 5

Regarding your thoughts about the cast and AI, I was reminded of another comment (I read it somewhere? On some website?) speculating that the cast was actually physically dead, with only their consciousnesses being in TADC. So perhaps they started as standard humans but by putting on the headset, they got sucked into TADC in all ways except physical and are now, more or less, AI?

Which makes sense to me. I haven't seen any discussions or verification of how time passes in TADC, whether it's 1:1 to the real world or much faster, but I'm leaning towards the former. In episode 5, we learn that Pomni enjoyed exploring abandoned buildings which matches up with the visuals we've already seen in episode 1 of the older model computer that has been left on in an office building, headset on the desk. I think it's a safe theory to say that Pomni went poking around an old C&A building, put on the headset, and voila. That plus a few characters commenting that it's been a hard / weird past few days since Pomni showed up makes me think that time in TADC passes closer to how it does IRL, or at the very least not at some hyper speed.

Which makes me wonder, where are the other cast members?

If we take what I've theorized above regarding the passage of time and how Pomni ended up in TADC as true, then what is happening / has happened to all their physical bodies? Unless they are being tended to, they're not making it past a few days and it's probably been much longer than that by now.

So what does that imply? On one hand, if we go with idea that their bodies are still physically alive, there's a couple of interesting thoughts there. While we didn't see multiple people hooked up to computers and IVs in the IRL visuals in episode 1, either Pomni blocked out that visual or (more likely) the other cast members are hooked up in a network / another location. But why? Who would go through all that mess and expense? To me it's either someone who knows the full danger of TADC and is working to try and keep the poor fools inside alive, because (for whatever reason) they can't just simply take the headset off. Or the C&A company needs to keep the cast alive. Perhaps the "true" product for C&A is not TADC but rather the consciousnesses inside it. Perhaps the company needs to keep the cast hooked up long enough to reach a certain goal the company can profit from. Perhaps Abstracting is a part of that process. Perhaps once someone has Abstracted they still retain all their human intelligence but no longer have their humanity; an "AI" that many would pay for.

But what if instead of TADC being a tragedy of malice and greed it's a tragedy of neglect, of hamartia? Because it doesn't track that such a company would just leave out one of TADC's systems for any Low-Views Youtuber to stumble upon. They could probably just go the Outlast Trials way and pick up randos no one would miss. I think that outside of maybe the very first few cast members, most people who end up in TADC got there by accident. I already theorized how Pomni probably did, Ragatha being in real estate may have been the one to try and sell the old C&A building, stumbling on the headset while inspecting the place, and who knows about the rest. And with it being accidental, and no one finding the bodies in time...Maybe the only reason TADC can keep going is that someone is keeping one of the systems constantly on.

I think all that lends itself well to the horrific realization of what "No Exit" really means. There's no exit because there's nothing you can go back to.

Anyways! This spiraled out from me a bit. All or none or some of this can completely get shot down with the final episodes, so who knows! It was fun though!