I am very skeptical when it comes to machine learning and all the hype surrounding it, but it’s not all bad. For example an improved firefox translate would be a nice feature to have. There might also be some usecases for accessibility or adblocking.
No this is a reasonable approach. Arrowhead are a a rather small company of around 100 people and automating things is easier said than done. They also never anticipated the game to be as successful as it is so at the time it probably wasn’t high on the priority list. Now they pay Joel overtime (I hope) and can think about how to implement an automated script to adjust the game.