If rule-based NLP is what he's truly referring to, he is actually very much on the money. Rule-based NLP gets too complicated too quickly and is useless when an

If rule-based NLP is what he's truly referring to, he is actually very much on the money. Rule-based NLP gets too complicated too quickly and is useless when analyzing a language other than the target language or analyzing a piece of text that is poorly-formed (bad grammar/spelling) or heavily peppered with loan words and loan constructions. Much like how Good Old-Fashioned AI has proven to be cumbersome and non-analogous to how biological brains actually work, rule-based NLP is flawed at its core. Statistical NLP has proven to be much more powerful, extensible, and tolerant to near-misses.