Toward the third generation artificial intelligence

There have been two competing paradigms in artificial intelligence (AI) development ever since its birth in 1956, i.e., symbolism and connectionism (or sub-symbolism). While symbolism dominated AI research by the end of 1980s, connectionism gained momentum in the 1990s and is gradually displacing symbolism. This paper considers symbolism as the first generation of AI and connectionism as the second generation. However, each of these two paradigms simulates the human mind from only one perspective. AI cannot achieve true human behaviors by relying on only one paradigm. In order to develop novel AI technologies that are safe, reliable, and extensible, it is necessary to establish a new explainable and robust AI theory. To this end, this paper looks toward developing a third generation artificial intelligence by combining the current paradigms.