Thanks. This is a well thought out and informative post.

There is some risk that the game could evolve in such a way that content is ignored completely as bots up vote based upon what other bots do.

To some degree it may already be happening due to the prominence that whale votes give a post and the likelihood that most bots are employed by whales.

The existing curation rewards algorithm, once properly understood, will spawn an arms race to build better bots. This means Steem will motivate the development of the decentralized autonomous curator.

I think it is interesting way to look at bots for sure. The problem is that where they stand right now the bots are not very intelligent. If they ever reach the point of being as good at curating as human beings then I would not be so opposed to them. Right now the idea seems to me at least to be contrary to good curation.

People will buy Steem Power just for the opportunity to apply their own curation reward algorithm in an attempt to out-earn other Steem Power holders. Algorithm development will advance like ASIC development.

Perhaps but I'm not sure that people would happy to have their content used as a means for others to develop curation ASICs. I think they would rather have real humans curating their content. That's just my opinion though.

I would also question why people would want to do this by buying SP and using Steemit when they can do it for free on other parts of the internet.

Also you don't need to actually even by SP to train your bot. You could simply do the data analysis and collect information. If your bot is really successful it will make the SP for you.