https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/sg0hiu/what_do_you_think_about_joscha_bachs_ideas/
Another example of an organism/agent would be a modern corporation. They are sentient - they understand themselves as distinct entities and their relation to the wider world, they are intelligent - they create models of the world they exist in and I guess I am not sure if they are conscious. They are instantiated on the humans and computers/software that make up the corporation and their goals often change over time. For example, when Google was founded, it probably did have aspirational and altruistic goals and was succesful in realizing many of these goals (google books/scholar etc) but over time as it's leadership changed, it's primary purpose seems to have become a perpetuation of it's own existence. Advertising was initially only a way to achieve it's other goals but over time it seems to have taken over all of Google.
On a personal note, he explains that there are two goals people might have in a conversation. Somewhat pithily, he refers to "nerds as people for whom the primary goal of conversation is to submit their thoughts to peer review while for most other people, the primary goal of conversation is to negotiate value alignment".