Yup. Devs like to think that sales people don't contribute real value and are basically just marketing, and that's true to a degree, but it's also true that sometimes the entire product doesn't contribute real value either. A senior dev building Uber/delivery clone #1745 run by VC funny money is "contributing" the same as a sales person, no matter how many frameworks and algorithms he uses. (Unless, of course, that algorithm is itself contributing to some efficiency in the deliveries.)

So the value the sales people provided was successfully bribing the executives.

You're not exactly wrong here, but many that's a kinda hilarious example. AI doesn't yet know how to operate in the grey area of not-quite-illegal bribery.

Why can't a computer program automatically buy tickets for F1 and send them to prospects?

How will it determine who gets the tickets? And which event is the most appropriate one for a given prospect? How will it know that the prospect is interested in the first place? Or available? Or worth wooing in this manner?

It could do that part. Making the decision about what to buy, how much of it, and for whom etc would be the types of non-trivial decisions you need your sales AI to make better than a person

The F1 tickets are about access. Your pal the sales dude buys you scotch and yaks about SAP.