I think he knows that. There was a period from the early 1950s (when people first started writing chess-playing software) to 1997 when humans were better at chess than computers were, and I think he is saying that we are still in the analogous period for the skill of programming.

But he should've know that people would jump at the opportunity to contradict him and should've written his comment so as not to admit such an easily-contradictable interpretation.