there are plenty of comment bots, while they may not be AI and able to engage in discussion they're still able to comment, especially when its in something like "introduceme" it auto posts things like "welcome to steemit, i have started following you please follow me back" etc etc.
If people are getting upvotes from bots all the time they are unlikely to bother with social interaction. Interaction is there to network and networking=profit. if you dont need to network to make profit then you dont really need to interact. You also end up with people that write absolute shitposts and then use an upvote bot for profit, draining the reward pool for everyone else even though their content is worthless at best.
bots that comments like "nice post" ... welcome to steemit... will just get flagged for spamming.
This post was up-voted by bid bots, paid bots and curation bots and yet we are here interacting with each other.
Oh no the reward pool. If we are worried about the size of the reward pool then we should just put a selection process who to join steemit.com. We should just pick the ones that will contribute to the steemit economy so we will not drain the reward pool.
You know what the irony of all these, most of the bots are owned or created by the WITNESSES. The witnesses are selected by voting them into position.
Have you voted a witness? Check if they are owning or supporting a bot. I bet you, they are. It is either they are the owners of the bot or supporting that bot. Look at the MSP bots they don't call MSP bots for just the fancy name. MSP Minnow Support Projects have plenty of bots.
If people hated the bots that much how come no one complains to the witnesses.
If people hated the bots that much how come the people who hated the bot that much still vote for the witnesses who owns and supports the bots.
i don't have a problem with the bots, nor the witnesses who run the bots, i take issue with the fact that just about anyone can use the bots and make a profit off them regardless of what they're posting. I know witnesses i voted for own a couple of the bots, thats fine by me. I also know those witnesses do their best not to let the bots upvote shitposts because its not fair on the people who put in time and effort.
And yes we are interacting with each other but that's also one example and anecdotal evidence at best. I'm not saying all discussion will cease to exist, simply that people will do it less if they can still make a profit without it. One of the best parts of steemit was when i first came and needed to network and talk to people to get any attention, but if all you have to do is log in write a post bid for an upvote bot and log out to get the same sort of attention then its counter-productive.
when you mention shitposts I get where you are coming from. Let's take this for consideration, the new member who joined steemit today. A month later they finally decide to write their first post after a month of being active commenting and reading posts. They learn about the good ole days and all the bots. The first post earn them .06 SP .06 SBD . Do you think they will not want to use the bots they have learned about since day one and all the good and bad articles. They will embrace them. The bot creators definitely have to be held accountable not just frowned upon.