Neil Stephenson’s REAMDE touches on this idea, and reaches the somewhat inevitable conclusion that if you can automate enough about a real world task that you c

Neil Stephenson’s REAMDE touches on this idea, and reaches the somewhat inevitable conclusion that if you can automate enough about a real world task that you can translate it into gaming terms, and determine automatically whether or not the player has succeeded at the task (in order to reward them ‘in game’ for completing the task), then you have probably done all the essential work needed to have a computer do the task in the first place.