Bots are a symptom of the real problem with the game design, and no, the problem isn't grinds. The problem is the fact that the entire focus of the game's community has become fixated solely on gear. There are minor exceptions to this, but in general people are doing whatever they are doing in the game solely to attain gear. Why do they raid? To get the best gear. Why do they do arenas/BGs/etc? To get the best gear. Some of them might say something along the lines of "I'm doing it to improve my character." but it amounts to the same thing. And what's really funny about it is that people are doing activities they don't enjoy strictly to improve gear that in many cases they don't use. Then some of them use bots to automate doing something they don't enjoy.
Here's the question - if you enjoy pvp, why would you use a bot to grind honor? Shouldn't the pvp itself be the goal? The same applies to every other activity. You should do what you enjoy and the gear/character improvement should be a bonus for doing what you enjoy. Basically, doing what you enjoy should be the goal and the gear should be a bonus which enables you to continue doing what you enjoy at a higher level. The problem is that the gear has become the focus and enjoying the process by which you gain the gear has become bonus or, in the case of botters, unneccessary. This is a serious game design flaw, but it's not tied to grinds. It's tied to player perception of the necessity of grinds. Instead of going out to pvp and getting gear as a result, they go out to get gear and pvp as a result.
You can exclude world class guilds and top rank pvpers from this generalization on the whole, but for the majority of the WoW community the idea that the journey is what matters and the gear is just a side benefit has been lost. Bots are just a symptom of this psyche shift.