What Computers Can't Do

What Computers Can't Do: The Limits of Artificial Intelligence (ISBN 0-06-090613-8) is a controversial work on artificial intelligence, authored by Hubert Dreyfus, a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. The book deals with the idea that thought, intelligence or reason can be reduced to computation. After a summary of the idea's history Dreyfus proceeds to attack this project, and show why it is impossible, regardless of the claims of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) research community. The attack consists of two strands: philosophical argumentation to show the qualitative difference between Human and Machine intelligence, and an exposure of the consistently unwarranted nature of the AI community's optimism. At least partly because of this ridiculing strand, no book has ever produced as much controversy and emotion in the AI community.
The book initially appeared under this title in 1972, and a second edition with a new introduction was published under the same name in 1979 (ISBN 0-06-090624-3). A third edition was published under the name What Computers Still Can't Do (ISBN 0-262-54067-3) in 1992.