This looks rather more like a distributed decision making platform. Say, liquid democracy + ethereum, rather than Accelerando-style "sentient alien corporations".
Noticeably, the DAO does not seem to be able to make any decision, it does things through proposals suggested by people which are voted on.
Still cool anyway.
- The DAO is a tool for people to make decisions collectively, by pooling their resources, voting on activities, and having Ethereum take care of trust issues. This is what you've described.
- Alternatively, The DAO could be described as similar to a computer virus: it tries to survive by spreading into as many systems as possible, using their computational resources to propagate itself further; but crucially its behaviour is completely determined by its code, rather than acting as an interpreter for centrally-issued commands (like, say, a botnet or Seti@Home).
While most computer viruses are parasitic, The DAO could be seen as symbiotic: in return for the resources it uses, it provides the services described above. It could be described as social engineering, like that of the ILOVEYOU virus, although it's not a trick (as far as we know).
In the case of The DAO in particular, the first description probably makes the most sense. However, I'd say Ethereum applications in general are better described by the latter. For example, a gambling application like etheroll could persist completely independently on the network for as long as people are willing to gamble with it, spending part of its commission on resources ("gas").