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====== Corporations, robots and animals: the role of human cognition in rational design ====== **Denis Sunko**\\ Department of Physics\\ Faculty of Science, University of Zagreb\\ Zagreb, Croatia\\ <blockquote> Corporations and animals are rational agents whose behavior is governed by the Nash equilibrium equation. Robotic intelligence is of the same general type, but with a relatively reduced role of entropy in their parameter space. Corporations are intermediate between robots and animals in this respect. It is argued that currently predictable improvements in both corporate governance and artificial intelligence are to increase the role of entropy, making both robots and corporations more similar to animals than to humans. The peculiarity of human cognition is the ability to manipulate context, which transcends the distinction between program and data. It is expressed in the design of purposeful engines. Modern insights into active thermodynamic engines, as distinct from passive self-organized structures, are leveraged with insights from evolutionary biology to argue that order in human societies is due to closed-circuit currents, distinct from relaxation currents, which depend on maintaining both potential differences and designed feedbacks. These claims are illustrated with a number of contemporary and historical examples, with the particular purpose of clarifying the role of elites in society. It is concluded that a conscious application of the active-engine paradigm is necessary to properly frame the discussion of contemporary societal challenges. </blockquote>