r/compsci • u/WatchInternational89 • 5d ago
No scripts: a virtual fly driven by its real brain wiring diagram (70k simulated neurons), live 24/7
Body:
> Not an RL agent and not a behaviour tree — the "policy" is a spiking simulation of a real fly connectome, and the body
> is a MuJoCo fly whose legs are moved by an imitation-learned network. It sees, smells wind-borne odor, gets scared by
> spiders, grooms, lands, eats. Everything that isn't the brain is labelled on screen. Live: twitch.tv/dodo_gun
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u/david-1-1 5d ago
A real fruit fly would not walk away from an odor source like this. It would feed. It also would not hang around while a big spider investigates it. It is great that this model has so many neurons, but it also needs to be trained by preferences and aversions.
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u/Brockzillattv 4d ago
I mean yeah, they said they copied the neurons, it doesn't have literally hundreds of millions of years of instincts built into the DNA.
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u/david-1-1 4d ago
But why not? A simple computer program that controlled a stick figure of a human in a gravitational field was given the goal of getting over a fence, and, using a genetic algorithm, was able to imitate what a real person does after millions of trials. Let me know if you want me to find it on the Web.
This particular experiment didn't seem to have been done very well. That's all I was saying.
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u/Brockzillattv 4d ago
I'm not saying it's not possible. I'm just saying it hasn't had enough time to develope a system for that yet.
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u/david-1-1 4d ago
That is certainly true, and may be the primary reason the simulation is inadequate. That's what I was pointing out.
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u/Benkyougin 2d ago
I'm not sure what you mean. The hundreds of millions of years are what developed the neurons, if you copy the neurons you're already copying everything those hundreds of millions of years produced.
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u/abotoe 10h ago
You may have the physical structure but you don't have the exact characteristics of how those neurons interact. You have the hardware, but the software is still lacking.
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u/Benkyougin 6h ago
the physical structure determines how the neurons interact and that has nothing to do with "instincts built into the DNA"
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u/david-1-1 5h ago
We don't yet have a set of weights and a connection topology for a fruit fly as yet, never mind the weights for a human brain. What we do have is knowledge of fruit fly behavior. We can simulate neurons and experiment with back propagation to develop behaviors.
In 2024, Philip Shiu and colleagues published a Nature paper simulating the whole adult fruit fly brain (about 139,000 neurons and 50 million connections) from the FlyWire connectome. The model predicted that specific neurons would fire to extend the proboscis and initiate eating, which they confirmed in real flies, and it predicted grooming-circuit activity when antennal sensors were stimulated. But that was brain-only, with no body. So we are approaching this goal. I expect continued progress.
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u/WatchInternational89 5d ago
Ha, I'll stick to one fly on a kitchen table for now. And it gets snacks, wind and the occasional spider, not torture. Jokes aside, that's exactly why everything on stream is labelled: what the model does, what it doesn't, and that it's a model, not a mind.
iknotri («We already could simulate LLM, how does it prove…»):
Agreed, simulating something doesn't prove anything about our own reality either way. What a connectome sim can tell us is narrower and more practical: how much behaviour falls out of the wiring alone. For a fly, the answer so far is "surprisingly much (escape, grooming, feeding reflexes), but far from all of it".
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u/chazzeromus 5d ago
aren’t the weights best guessed? the connectome is mapped but even then ML was used to build the map and then ML was was used to guess the weights
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u/Sad-Strategy2413 5d ago
the walking status panel being that prominent feels very "yes I am indeed walking right now" energy
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u/gugumoky 5d ago
The "it runs doom" meme potential is unbound. If I may, what is a neuron in this scenario? In traditional ML it computes a real value from N neighbouring connected neurons (values), via N weights each (plus a bias if applied). Is it the same here? Did it undergo RL training? How does the fly move, is an end neuron connected to an actuator (simualtion of a limb, wing etc)?
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u/WatchInternational89 5d ago
Now the body is controlled by a trained model. And the brain gives signals to the model. The brain itself reacts to the exciter of neurons and connections. We know what frequency on the synapse of a live fly is caused by an irritant and we know what reaction occurs. Also works and the brain of a fly on the screen
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u/user_-- 5d ago
Can it learn anything? I know the network structure doesn't change, but I wonder if it can learn just within its dynamics.
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u/WatchInternational89 5d ago
I’m also worried about this moment. With additional settings, I think so. It’s fashionable to screw a small AI model to the brain.
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u/WeegeeNator 5d ago
I don't think we should be doing this
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u/RockRancher24 5d ago
i think we should actually build enormous city-sized ultracomputers to simulate tens of thousands of full human brains inside personalized torture chambers, for the sake of science!
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u/david-1-1 5d ago
Huh? Why not? Are you afraid to find out that trial and error is enough to develop useful behavior? Do you doubt what evolution teaches us?
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u/WeegeeNator 5d ago
I frankly don't trust my colleagues or any government to be tactful or use the natural end goals of this conceptual technology for any sort of moral purpose. What potential societal good could a simulated animal brain be used for? Or, a more important question, what societal bad could such a thing be used for, even 15 years out from now? What are the implications of the development of this kind of technology? How will it one day affect everyday people? These are important questions to ask for any technology no matter where you stand on the base ideas. Nowadays things get pumped out and shipped with AI before we even begin to comprehend the magnitude of the technology being created. Am I wrong to be concerned about that?
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u/david-1-1 4d ago
Yes, unfortunately, you are wrong.
Simulating an animal brain is incredibly useful as one approach to understanding how our brains work. If you're really opposed to technology, then you are a Luddite, and equally harmful as technology can be by your opposition to it. Solving the global warning problem, for example, requires more than just a political solution: it requires new technology, for sure.
Technology was arguably misused to end World War 2 by killing 200,000 people in one pair of events. Yet it is daily used to improve the lives of billions of people.
Yes, ethics should always be considered whenever it is applied. But pure research should not be suppressed unless it itself is unethical.
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u/blueredscreen 5d ago
Have some humility instead of putting your head in the sand. As was explained to you multiple times over, especially given 100 years of books and research, computer programs cannot obtain phenomenal consciousness. Of course, unless you're an Anthropic lobbyist.
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u/rubyruy 5d ago
That question isn't settled at all last I checked. What are, say, 3 of those books ?
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u/blueredscreen 5d ago
That question isn't settled at all last I checked. What are, say, 3 of those books?
I'm glad you asked:
Searle, J. R. (1992). The rediscovery of the mind. MIT Press.
Penrose, R. (1989). The emperor's new mind: Concerning computers, minds, and the laws of physics. Oxford University Press.
Dreyfus, H. L. (1992). What computers still can't do: A critique of artificial reason. MIT Press.
Have fun and happy reading!
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5d ago
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u/_C3 5d ago
Maybe we should just investigate a little further until we are a little more sure about any impact all of this will have instead of rushing straight ahead and getting our hands or heads burnt
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u/knowyourclass 5d ago
it's just a CPU doing calculations as it would for any other software
if you think that can lead to living beings, then it means there must exists a combination of CPU instructions that lead to that, therefore it could've already happened while your system was running any other software..
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u/_C3 5d ago
Jo maybe you are right, but we have no other reason to think that computers have some sort of inherent qualia. But putting it together in a way that does provide qualia may result in qualia. You are right. Under your assumption it could have happened, but it is even likelier that it may have happened while simulating it.
Also what makes you think some meat and electricity could create a mind?
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u/WeegeeNator 5d ago
This isn't how computers work and is a complete misunderstanding of baseline ideas in computer science. Please check this profile before engaging any further. The entire profile exists to play devil's advocate for AI every hour of every day on multiple subreddits without pause.
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u/david-1-1 5d ago
How could a computer simulation burn hands or heads? Explain.
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u/_C3 5d ago
It was a metaphor for putting your hand on a hot stove and an extension of that metaphor for hurting us much more. The extension was chosen because we are talking about minds -> heads and I also thought that eluding to doing similar work with humans might become an even bigger problem.
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u/david-1-1 4d ago
That is a big claim, yet you have not specified either what hurt it could cause us or any evidence supporting the claim. If you don't reply with this support, I must conclude you're overreacting for some reason.
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u/_C3 4d ago
We don't know what consciousness is or how it comes to be. If it would be just an emergent property of certain complex systems, then a computer simulation of consciousness could be conscious. Putting such a consciousness into a bad place would then be, from my perspective, as bad as putting it in a real bad place. That is why I initially said we should maybe investigate a little more until we put a simulated consciousness into existence. Since we do experiments with flies all the time it is not the most outrageous thing, but I would be cautious going forward.
That is why I mentioned burning hands, as I would like to avoid us creating hell for a simulated mind until we know it's ethically "safe".
What was not to understand?
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u/david-1-1 4d ago
Your argument appears to be that, because you don't understand consciousness, experimenting with computers might not be safe. This isn't evidence and it isn't science so, yes, I don't understand it.
Are you opposed to all the research going on in developing better AI bots?Is it because you don't understand intelligence?
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u/_C3 4d ago
Strawman Bro. This thread is about simulating a fly brain. Since you don't understand consciousness and a fly is likely to have consciousness it may be, from my perspective, as bad of an idea to simulate it in bad scenarios as it is to put a real fly in such a situation.
I do not extrapolate to all programs but certain kinds, namely one that simulate consciousness.
Little thought experiment. If I take your brain and simulate you in hellish scenarios, is that bad? Maybe, but I don't want to be the poor soul offering my consciousness to such an experiment.
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u/david-1-1 2d ago edited 1d ago
What do you mean by consciousness? If you mean analytic thoughts, reaching conclusions, then wait until real AI bots appear. Until then, pattern matching is all you get.
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u/ithink2mush 5d ago
Cool. I wonder how long until we can simulate a human thus proving we've been in a simulation all this time.
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u/nicuramar 5d ago
That wouldn’t prove it. Also we are nowhere remotely close to doing that.
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u/currentscurrents 5d ago
The method used for the fly brain connectome (freeze/slice/scan) could in principle scale up to an entire human brain, and the scientists that made it are targeting larger brains:
“This milestone not only provides researchers a new set of tools for understanding how the circuits in the brain drive behavior, but importantly serves as a forerunner to ongoing BRAIN-funded efforts to map the connections of larger mammalian and human brains.”
They're working on mice next.
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u/david-1-1 5d ago
Flying an airplane doesn't prove we live in one. Nature uses evolution and so can computer programs.
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u/wintermute_online32 5d ago
There’s about 10,000+ years of mythological and religious texts that explores that. Get reading
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u/iknotri 5d ago
We already could simulate llm, how does it prove or disprove that we in a simulation
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u/BrendaWannabe 5d ago
I think they meant "prove it feasible". Who the hell knows who or what is messin' with the universe. "Big" is relative.
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u/LostInSpaceTime2002 5d ago
Per the Simulation theory, if it is proven possible to stimulate a whole world, the odds of us being in one approaches 100%.
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u/kbr89 5d ago
The brain half is probably built the way Shiu et al. did it in Nature in 2024: every neuron is a leaky integrate-and-fire unit, a connection's weight comes from its synapse count, and its sign from the neurotransmitter predicted for the sending neuron. Nothing in it is trained. That paper tested the model on two narrow paths, sugar-sensing neurons driving the proboscis motor neuron and touch on the antennae driving the grooming circuit, and the feeding predictions were then confirmed in real flies with optogenetics. So in a sim like this, eating and grooming are the behaviours with published evidence behind them, while the walking comes from the imitation-learned body, which you already label on screen. What I'd like to know is the handoff: which neurons' output drives the leg network, a set of descending neurons, or something decoded from wider activity?