What if the bots apart from voting also make simple comments and receive massive upvotes from other bots?
I believe you are right when saying this would create an “arms race for curation rewards”. A flagging war between supporters and people against this.
So I am not quite sure if this could improve steemit.
"What if the bots apart from voting also make simple comments and receive massive upvotes from other bots?"
This wouldn't make economic sense. The bots would be better off self-voting or vote-trading this vote power more secretly. If they engaged in this to put themselves at the top of Steemian's blog posts, I think the community would quickly regulate and flag them.
Not much fear of being retaliated upon for flagging a bot!