Dreyfus does not appear to have claimed that computers would never be able to play chess well. At least, not in that book.
He reacted with skepticism when Newell and Simon said in 1957 that a computer would be world chess champion by 1967 and, well, he was right to.
He said that the computational techniques in use for computer chess in the 1970s wouldn't be capable of producing a world-class player, and he was probably wrong about that -- largely, I guess, because he didn't foresee how big an impact a performance improvement of ~10000x could have.
If he actually claimed that playing chess better than humans was impossible, can you say where?
He reacted with skepticism when Newell and Simon said in 1957 that a computer would be world chess champion by 1967 and, well, he was right to.
He said that the computational techniques in use for computer chess in the 1970s wouldn't be capable of producing a world-class player, and he was probably wrong about that -- largely, I guess, because he didn't foresee how big an impact a performance improvement of ~10000x could have.
If he actually claimed that playing chess better than humans was impossible, can you say where?