Inherited Memory Boosts AI Flies Until Environment Flips, Then Blank Slate Wins

A developer simulating fruit fly neural circuits across generations found that passing down an external memory graph — rather than synaptic weights — allowed descendants to inherit learned behaviors without reliving them. In a stable environment, memory-inheriting lineages outperformed blank-slate counterparts, behaving like preloaded experts from early generations. However, the inherited memory grew increasingly certain over time with no mechanism for decay or correction. When the simulated world was reversed so that a previously safe cue became lethal, lineages carrying deep ancestral certainty died out faster than blank-slate flies starting with no prior knowledge. The experiment highlights a core risk in inherited learning systems: knowledge optimized for one environment can become a liability when conditions change.