[mjn]

It's simple compared to modern machine learning, but linear programming [1] was initially developed by Leonid Kantorovich partly with the goal of automating central planning. Most of his ideas weren't implemented in practice though.

Here's a recent paper surveying some of that work and how one might approach the central allocation problem with the benefit of modern techniques: https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.01539

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_programming