This month we have a candidate for the dumbest “think piece” of the year, and it comes courtesy of American Thinker’s “The last painting contractor.”

This one has all the ingredients for a disaster from the start. We have an egghead columnist who apparently believes he understands the painting contracting industry because he owns a rental property in Fort Lauderdale.

This titan of industry has discovered how to type in a chat box to A.I., and from there decided to write an article predicting that an industry employing over 200,000 people will vanish overnight.

“How could he come to that ridiculous conclusion?” you may ask. Well, this writer decided it was time for his quarter century repaint, and he wanted to know what it would cost.

“Rather than calling contractors, I asked an artificial intelligence system,” he writes. And you know he knows what he’s talking about because he calls it an “artificial intelligence system.”

The chat box gave him an estimate for what it would cost to just paint the walls, or the ceilings, or suggested a whole interior repaint for “around $5,000.”

“The numbers were useful. But something deeper struck me,” the author writes. “If I uploaded photographs of the individual rooms, a far more complete picture would emerge.”

Fair enough. Many painting contractors are already using AI tools to help with estimating, scheduling, marketing, and customer communication.

But estimating a job isn’t the same as doing the job. How does the chatbot actually get paint on the walls?

“I anticipate that within ten years this chain of execution will compress entirely,” the writer explains. “The AI won’t just design and plan — it will direct me to a suitable arrangement with an autonomous robotic system.”

And from this, our dear columnist concludes: “There is no traditional painting contractor in this future.”

There’s no doubt AI is changing the painting industry. (Check out our recent podcast on this subject.)

But the craftsmanship required to produce high-quality finishes in occupied homes, historic buildings, commercial facilities, and under difficult and variable jobsite conditions isn’t something robots are poised to replace anytime soon.

More likely, AI will make it easier to connect homeowners with qualified local painters, not eliminate the painters themselves. The human holding the brush or the sprayer isn’t disappearing anytime soon.

But if there’s one job AI may already be replacing, it’s writing columns about subjects their authors don’t know much about. At least in this case, A.I. seems to be replacing some American Thinkers.