This guy should look into research labeled as artificial general intelligence (AGI) or deep learning. If he really understood for example what Watson can do or the leading research using things like autoencoders or hierarchical temporary memory for natural language understanding then he would have a better informed and less pessimistic attitude.
The piece actually seems like a backhanded critique of the optimism shown by the deep learning community (which of course Winograd is aware of). It also seems like an appreciative backward glance at topics that interested Winograd earlier in his career, but are less fashionable now.
