I put a real fruit fly’s brain in charge of Super Mario Bros — Transcript

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1. 0:00This is a fruit fly playing Super Mario
2. 0:02Bros.
3. 0:03In 2025, Janelia and Google mapped every
4. 0:06neuron in a male fruit fly.
5. 0:08All of them. Then they put it on the
6. 0:10internet. The internet went wild and
7. 0:13pushed it to its absolute limits.
8. 0:16So I had to try it myself.
9. 0:19It all started a month ago, when I started
10. 0:21playing around with the fly.
11. 0:23Things got messy real quick.
12. 0:25So, the basics.
13. 0:27We read the game and turn it into things
14. 0:29the fly can sense. Whichever neurons fire,
15. 0:32decide the move.
16. 0:34Let's start with the fly.
17. 0:35Let's call him Flyuigi.
18. 0:39Flyuigi wants to go home.
19. 0:43So we shine a home signal in front of him.
20. 0:47Let's put the signal on the right, and
21. 0:49Flyuigi walks towards the flag.
22. 0:54Now he needs to learn to jump.
23. 0:56When something looms over a fly's vision,
24. 0:59the fly jumps.
25. 1:02Let's make the Koopa and Goomba appear
26. 1:03big. Let's also make the pipes, pits and
27. 1:06blocks loom.
28. 1:07Great. Now he can jump over things.
29. 1:11Right now he's an overglorified Google
30. 1:13dinosaur.
31. 1:18Let's make it interesting.
32. 1:19Let's see if he can power up.
33. 1:22A loud sound startles a fly.
34. 1:24It jumps, or moves away.
35. 1:27So let's put a buzz on the question block.
36. 1:29Flies are attracted to sweet smells, so
37. 1:31let's make the mushrooms smell sweet.
38. 1:33And flies hate sour smells, so let's make
39. 1:36the enemies smell sour.
40. 1:38And run it!
41. 1:40He hits the question block.
42. 1:41He grabs the mushroom.
43. 1:42He powers up.
44. 1:46He backs away from the first Goomba.
45. 1:48So why does he walk straight into the
46. 1:50second one? Flyuigi gets confused when
47. 1:53there's too much going on.
48. 1:55So we need to tune how strong each sense
49. 1:57is so he makes better decisions.
50. 1:59Tuning by hand takes forever.
51. 2:02This took me back to SethBling's MarI/O.
52. 2:06But instead of evolving the brain, we only
53. 2:09evolve how strong each sense is.
54. 2:11The wiring is never touched.
55. 2:14Cue the montage! Each generation gets a
56. 2:16fitness score based on how far Flyuigi
57. 2:18gets and how many points he collects.
58. 2:20Each new generation is bred from the best
59. 2:23of the last. Before evolution, we got 1
60. 2:25win in 10 attempts.
61. 2:27After evolution, we won all 10.
62. 2:29A few honest caveats.
63. 2:32The pit logic doesn't generalize to other
64. 2:34levels.
65. 2:35Mario also stalls at the finish when
66. 2:37there's no flag.
67. 2:39And evolution only ran on one level.
68. 2:43Shout-out to Ro0oney, whose Minecraft mod
69. 2:45and awesome sandbox inspired this project.
70. 2:50And lastly, shout-out to Flyuigi.
71. 2:52You're an absolute legend, bro.
72. 2:55If you enjoyed this, like and share.
73. 2:58And if you're a recruiter watching this,
74. 3:01feel free to check out my tool.
75. 3:03The link is in the description.
76. 3:04If you want to join my open source project
77. 3:06to make Flyuigi win all levels, hit me up.
78. 3:09I'll see you guys next time.