A Reddit user known as ActualAerie1011 says they used Google's simulated fruit fly connectome to play the card game Balatro, reportedly achieving a roughly 20% win rate on the easiest difficulty with the default deck. The approach reportedly paired a custom seed-finding algorithm with reinforcement-style feedback, rewarding the model for good outcomes and penalizing poor ones. No code or technical documentation has been shared publicly, leading some commenters to question the claim's validity.
androidauthority.com
· 2026-09-18
Software engineer Alex Wormuth built a simulated fruit fly brain using Google and HHMI Janelia's newly released connectome data, then wired it to control Doom frame by frame. Each frame generates thousands of brightness and color inputs that feed into the simulated brain's 25.6 million connections, translating neural activity into in-game controls, including a pain response modeled on real dopamine receptors.
cnet.com
· 2026-09-13
A Coinbase engineer created 'Stonkfly,' an open-source simulation of a male fruit fly's brain and eyes containing 166,700 neurons and 25.6 million synaptic connections, and set it loose reading candlestick charts to buy, sell or hold cryptocurrencies. The virtual fly perceives price charts as raw pixel data through simulated photoreceptors, acts roughly every 500 milliseconds, and receives a dopamine-like reward signal for profitable trades and an aversive signal for losses, with trading fees also counted as losses.
tomshardware.com
· 2026-09-12
Following Google's release of a detailed 3D map of a male fruit fly's brain and nervous system, developers quickly began using the digital neural model to control video games. Engineers mapped sensory inputs from Doom, Beat Saber, and Super Mario 64 to the fly's simulated neurons, using dopamine-linked reinforcement signals to shape its in-game behavior. A separate female fly brain model from Princeton's Flywire project was similarly repurposed to play Minecraft.
games.slashdot.org
· 2026-09-12
GoKawiil