When I think of insects, I see them as tiny microcontrollers. In my head bees have a little shift register to measure time.
While ants have control over each limb, they mostly move by rotating two tripods one at a time. It's like they turn on an output for three legs, turn off the output, and then turn on the output for the other three legs.
Ants can walk backward, though, so perhaps it is more like a half-bridge rectifier with multiple channels.
I read a paper long ago (so there's no chance of my recalling the source!) and one of the takeaways was that in a cockroach one of the neural ganglia basically had a binary "run!" mode that was flipped on instantly if sense nerves very close to it were triggered. So when researchers tapped or blew air on the rears of the roaches the roach in question would sprint away, its powerful legs being efficiently driven at full tilt by this little sprinting circuit without needing any input or interaction from the more complex main brain. Imagine getting used to that effect! "Ahhh! Why am I suddenly running and where am I going to steer this runaway body?"
Humans have that too. Startle response, withdrawing from pain (hot stove), blink response upon incoming object - all these happen without involving the higher brainstem at all. I think some of them barely even connect with the brain.
I don't know much about insects, but spiders at least seem to be much more than mere automatons. The way jumping spiders are aware of their environment makes them feel much closer to a dog than to a microcontroller.
While ants have control over each limb, they mostly move by rotating two tripods one at a time. It's like they turn on an output for three legs, turn off the output, and then turn on the output for the other three legs.
Ants can walk backward, though, so perhaps it is more like a half-bridge rectifier with multiple channels.
They're like little organic ICs.