CONCEPT
The AI Hype Industry
The commercial apparatus that produces mandatory optimism about AI — the modern descendant of the career-coaching industry Ehrenreich documented, extracting fees from the displaced while converting their structural problems into individual attitude deficits.
The AI hype industry is the commercial apparatus that produces, distributes, and enforces optimistic framings of the AI transition — the consultants, conference organizers, LinkedIn influencers, motivational speakers, corporate trainers, and reskilling program vendors whose business depends on sustaining the professional class's belief that the transition is an opportunity rather than a threat. The industry's operational structure is identical to the career-coaching industry Ehrenreich documented in Bait and Switch: charge fees to displaced or anxious professionals for services whose primary function is reframing structural problems as personal adaptations to be managed through better attitude.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The industry performs three distinct functions that work together. First, it produces content — the books, podcasts, newsletters, keynote speeches — that establish the cultural frame within which AI is discussed. The content is overwhelmingly optimistic, not because its producers are uniformly persuaded of AI's benefits but because optimistic content sells better than ambivalent content. The