ALBAWABA - Concerns recently flooded social media after Biotechnology Research Eon Systems PBC revealed that it uploaded a fruit fly's brain into a computer by incorporating its 140,000-neuron connectome in a virtual body.
Dr. Alex Wissner-Gross posted on X (formerly Twitter), sharing a detailed article and a video about Eon's breakthrough, capturing the fruit fly behaving normally by walking, grooming, and feeding virtually.
The Eon Systems PBC co-founder wrote, "The Singularity has belonged exclusively to artificial minds, until now. For decades, whole-brain emulation has been the tantalizing counterpart to artificial intelligence: copy a biological brain, neuron by neuron and synapse by synapse, and run it."
He added, "Today, for the first time, I am releasing a video from a company I helped found, Eon Systems PBC, demonstrating what we believe is the world's first embodiment of a whole-brain emulation that produces multiple behaviors."
'Humans are next': Scientists upload a fruit fly's brain into a computer
Dr. Alex Wissner-Gross stressed how the video wasn't simply an "animation" but a "reinforcement learning policy mimicking biology." This was made possible by copying the brain, neuron-to-neuron, from electron microscopy data into a digital simulation setting.
He stated further that "Eon is scaling its team and infrastructure to attempt the mouse and human brains next."
This marks the first time scientists have combined a simulated brain with a functioning body, contrary to previous studies that only managed to wire the brain without incorporating it into a body.
The news received mixed reactions on social media, with many users liking the breakthrough to a sci-fi movie set in a dystopian setting. A social media user wrote on X, "Your consciousness is software. And someone just proved it can be copy-pasted. Start your day with that."
Another added, "The creepy part: this isn't AI. It’s a full biological simulation. It wasn't trained — the digital fly simply 'lives' on its own."
