A simulated fruit fly brain learns to drive. I turned the training into a 24/7 racing league with Elo, seasons and family dynasties [P]

Key points

• Each “pilot” is a fly brain model of ~2,400 neurons [based on: FlyWire connectome / own architecture / spiking network?]1
• Training: [RL algorithm / evolutionary strategy / plasticity rule], 10000000+ episodes so far1
• The best pilots produce “offspring”: the next generation inherits their weights, so the league has dynasties (gen 2, child of the season champion, etc.)1
• What surprised me: [1–2 real observations, e.g. “flies discovered launch control on their own”, “descendants overtook the parent in 300 episodes”, “one fly learned to exploit...”]1

Sources (1)

• [1]A simulated fruit fly brain learns to drive. I turned the training into a 24/7 racing league with Elo, seasons and family dynasties [P]
  r/MachineLearning (top, daily) · Oct 16, 10:09 PM

  For the past 4 weeks I’ve been training models of the Drosophila brain to control a car in a drag racing simulator.

  - Each “pilot” is a fly brain model of ~2,400 neurons [based on: FlyWire connectome / own architecture / spiking network?]

Extractive summary: sentences quoted from the sources.