I do think autorouting is largely a UI problem for this reason. Specifying the constraints is very difficult, especially when it's also tied into assessing stuff like power distribution (where the rule of thumb of 100nF is almost certainly suboptimal, proximity probably matters less than you would think, and you can wind up with too much capacitance, but actually evaluating what matters is so much more complex that unless it's really critical it tends to be not much better than a blind guess that most of the time works well enough. I really would like to figure out a better set of rules for this, something a bit less heavyweight than a full simulation but still at least vaguely quantitive in terms of tradeoffs).

To me innovation in autorouting means being able to 'have a conversation' with it: being able to easily adjust things and see the results and map out the tradeoffs would be very useful, but it doesn't seem like this is an area that's being pushed too hard.