I find it quite hard to believe you couldn't do even better if you were a single mind perceiving what the ants did and controlling them

Sorry for the additional response to the same post, but I feel this bears special notice, as I just now realized that we might be talking "past" one another.

IF the purpose of the endeavor isn't just to "do better", but rather to learn about how intelligence and cognition operate, then it seems to me that examining a real-world manifestation of intelligence (and even cognition in the form of observing an environment and reacting to it with intent and even "instictive" tool-use [such as harvesting leaves to build a bridge to cross a river]) in a radically alternative substrate than "simple" neurology should be taken as an opportunity to learn more about how, in principle, cognition and intelligence "work".

In other words: ant colonies as collectives are a form of "unit of cognition" (in the manner tha a fly or a rat or a human each represent a "unit of cognition") -- but "ant colonies" do not have brains. The act of "figuring out how to handle this river between us and our goal" never occurs in any particular ant or even specific set of ants within a colony. I find this fact fascinating and believe it is a deeply under-explored avenue towards understanding cognition and intelligence.