I agree with you that it's early days for RL. I think some companies are using it in their advertising platforms, but it's not really my field.

That said, I strongly disagree about what constitutes the proper utilization of research funds. IMO, society should invest in basic research without the expectation of solutions to significant real-world problems.

Still, I'd be really surprised if I don't see advances from the field of reinforcement learning used in a ton of applications during my lifetime.