Aatish Bhatia explains how simple neural circuits create complex behavior
An interactive essay demonstrates how minimal brain structures—just a few neurons and connections—can produce surprisingly sophisticated behaviors.
What to know
- An interactive essay demonstrates that minimal neural circuits—just a few neurons and connections—can produce sophisticated behaviors like light-seeking and steering without any central intelligence.
- The piece shows that the type of neural connection (excitatory vs. inhibitory) fundamentally changes behavior, illustrating how brain structure determines output.
- Commenters contextualize the work within a decades-long lineage of emergent-behavior research, from Grey Walter's 1948 robots to modern simulations, exploring what constitutes 'intelligence' in simple systems.
- The visualization and interactive format resonated with audiences, sparking discussion about educational value and practical applications from BEAM robotics to philosophical implications.
The article is a valuable educational tool that illuminates how complex behavior emerges from simple rules and connections.
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“Love the article, I'm jealous of the author's ability to visualize this.”
pwndByDeath · Hacker News ↗
The work connects to and builds upon established research traditions in robotics, cybernetics, and artificial life going back decades.
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“The ancestor is not Braitenberg. It's Grey Walter's turtles. In 1948, W. Grey Walter built two simple robots that could sense light and touch.”
Animats · Hacker News ↗
The insights about emergent behavior from simple rules have profound philosophical implications for understanding intelligence and consciousness.
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“This stuff is like staring the universe into its soul.”
teekert · Hacker News ↗
Aatish Bhatia Author and educatorW. Grey Walter Pioneering roboticist (1948)
How it unfolded 3 developments, newest first · click a bar or a number to jump postscomments
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background
Discussion explores philosophical implications of emergent behavior — Commenters debate whether behavior emerging from simple circuits constitutes 'intelligence' and reflect on how the visualization illustrates fundamental concepts in cybernetics, neuroscience, and artificial life.
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Commenters contextualize work within history of emergent behavior research
Discussion centers on the pedagogical value of the piece and its place in a longer tradition of exploring how simple rules generate complex behavior, from W. Grey Walter's 1948 robots to modern simulations.
“The ancestor is not Braitenberg. It's Grey Walter's turtles. In 1948, W. Grey Walter built two simple robots that could sense light and touch. Much complex behavior emerged.”
— Animats -
I always think of Conway's Game of Life in this regard. He (Conway) seems to not think that much of his invention, but to me it it THE understandable proof that nearly anything can emerge from simple rules. Even the Game of life itself [0]. It's the basis of Permutation city (Greg Egan) [1], from 1994 (!) That guy is so ahead of his time, him and…
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Highly recommend the photovore BEAM robot if you’ve got a soldering iron. It requires a small solar cell and a few analog components from online suppliers like Digikey.
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Story gains traction on tech forums and social media
The article is shared on Lobsters and Mastodon with positive reception. Multiple commenters on Hacker News reference historical precedents and related work, discussing connections to Grey Walter's turtles, Braitenberg's vehicles, BEAM robotics, and Conway's Game of Life.
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The ancestor is not Braitenberg. It's Grey Walter's turtles.In 1948, W. Grey Walter built two simple robots that could sense light and touch.[1] Much complex behavior emerged. That's where this idea started.Watch the video.[2] It's very impressive for 1948 and tube technology. If you've seen an original Roomba, you've seen a similar level of…
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> If you saw creatures behaving like this in the wild, you might attribute some rudimentary intelligence to them.> But we’ve just shown you how this apparent intelligence arises from the bottom up, with just four neurons and two connections. There’s no magic here. In this view, behavior emerges from neural circuits.Isn't the conclusion here that…
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See also: https://cyberneticzoo.com/cyberneticanimals/1969-the-logo-tu... In my gifted & talented class in the 80's we were introduced to computers and I remember seeing the picture of "Irving" and thinking "Wow, I should learn LOGO to program robots when I grow up" (unfortunately, recursion scared me so I switched to BASIC and later assembly).
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- 3 days quiet
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Aatish Bhatia publishes "Let's Build a Brain" interactive essay
The article uses a fictional creature called a spark with a simple neural circuit to demonstrate how minimal brain structures produce complex behaviors. It walks through progressively sophisticated circuit designs and shows how excitatory vs. inhibitory connections affect behavior.
“Even this tiny brain can create rich and unexpected behaviors.”
— Aatish Bhatia, Author · source
What people are saying 7 voices from 1 site · best of 16 · verbatim
- Oct 31
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Grey Walter also wrote The Living Brain in 1953. It's a fascinating window into the state of brain science and robotics around that time.
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Thank you - also came to comment on Elmer and Elise being the precursor long ago.Walter himself mentioned the perceived complexity of a simple system to the observer, stating it "might be accepted as evidence of some degree of self-awareness."
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Love the article, I'm jealous of the author's ability to visualize this. I played with this a while ago using small neural networks and state preference to do something similar, the NNs became self tuning PID controllers and the bots could fly around the simulation like hummingbirds. Was pretty neat.
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It’s very odd that Braitenberg didn’t cite Walter’s precedent in ‘Vehicles’. He very likely knew about Walter, Ashby’s homeostat, etc, and used the cybernetics terminology in some of his work.Fun historical note: the linked newsreel film was known about but unseen for a long time, then found by Owen Holland in the BBC Bristol archive around 1999…
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Growing up I tinkered with BEAM robotics. It's a philosophy of design that begins with these types of very simple reactive circuits usually from scavenged parts. It's nice to see someone break down the effect of different variables in the design.
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Check out Valentino Braitenberg's vehicles. It's one of my favourite books ever.
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Best thing is, you can physically build this with a few discrete analog components! Search terms: light-bot, or light following robot. You can try to create swarms adding a light to the rear end of your robot