That would go well with the concept of Seed Factory, which is a factory that could reproduce itself, from raw materials. If we can build a self replicating device, we will reach another kind of singularity. At the moment, the whole human race is such a self replicating system, but if we can take humans out of the loop we could ship it to an undeveloped area (another planet?) and have it create a city and industry for us.
Another application would be to ensure self reliance for humans in the post automation world. A self replicating factory, capable of solving the whole logistics puzzle of building repairing itself, as well as supporting its owners, would ensure that its owners don't depend on UBI or jobs.
Such a factory would initially need some industrial machines and robots, probably at minimum a 3D printer, some raw materials and high end pieces such as CPUs. Then it would gradually print and assemble more equipment.
It would eventually bootstrap like a compiler, being able to "compile" an identical factory from raw materials.
Keeping count of each object, its source parts, construction waste, energy spent in building it, processes and time they could "compile" an ecosystem of devices that carefully work together, recycling everything that is wasted in the process. As the capabilities of the factory increase, the process could be "recompiled" to take advantage of the new capacity.
The place of AI would be to optimize the process. Instead of a hand-made industrial compiler, it could search for a way to combine its resources in more masterful ways. It can keep track of more things than human planners (project managers?) can. It could potentially assess the needs and organize the industrial production for a whole country in a more efficient way than capitalism or communism could.
The beauty of a seed factory is in its initial price - under 5% of the price of a factory built from buying equipment, because it only needs the seed of the factory and raw materials. The factory would grow like an organism, expanding itself. Most of the factory would be self made. Just like a cell, or an animal.
[Wiki Book] https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Seed_Factories
There is a massive advantage to seeing everything all the time and being able to arrange and organise everything at the same time.
How much more complexity is added by resource mgmt vs just "legal play possibilities" as now you have "this move isnt legal because you dont have the requisite resource, thus you need to depend on completing those moves first"
Are there any efforts applying deepmind to, say, commodities markets? Or something along those lines? Supply chains for complex hardware manufacturing logistics?
Robot assembly of complex parts in an assembly line?
Sure, AI's playing games is cool...
What I would like to see is an AI playing "Farm Simulator" to manage a vast swatch of farm equipment making and picking food over a vast expanse - with little human interaction.
* Auto dock
* Auto Harvest
* Auto Refuel
etc....