[RandomLensman]

If there is a single owner, could shut down the place, for example.

As I said, in my experience, the humans - interchangible or not, as customers, competitors, owners etc - determine what happens, not the corporation itself.

Can look at a corporate as "living thing" itself, but I think that underestimates the human side.

[direwolf20]

Individual neurons determine how your arm moves, but we still speak of a human as a whole being that makes decisions.

[tgv]

Then again, there are 100 billion highly interconnected neurons without a CEO, a CFO, a CTO, a COO, etc. Thinking that from 50, 500 or even 5000 barely connected people with exterior motivation some higher intelligence can emerge is naive. Do not anthropomorphize.

[TeMPOraL]

> 50, 500 or even 5000 barely connected people

5000 barely connected people isn't a corporation, it's a mob. A corporation has more to it.

In fact people aren't much more important that the software that runs on them. Because that's what all the bureaucracy is - all those rules and bylaws and contractual obligations and checklists and playbooks and regulation - software running on a runtime made of meat, one form letter or internal memo at a time.

Most of the time, losing people is to corporation what clipping a toe nail is to an adult, or a bit flip to a modern computer - a non-event you barely notice and carry on.

> higher intelligence can emerge

Nobody said "higher intelligence". I mentioned animals, ant supercolonies, but the same patterns of behavior is visible in even most basic multi-cellular and single-cellular organisms.

> Do not anthropomorphize.

Nobody says you need to.

(Except with LLMs, where refusing to do so means you'll just remain confused about what can or cannot, should or should not, be done with them.)