> "design me a sneaker and all the equipment to manufacture it autonomously"

We already have sneaker designs and the equipment to manufacture them. Whatever it spits out is going to be, at best, a mediocre clone of something that already exists. What exactly is the point?

Sneaker manufacturing is a very manual process. Nike famously tried to automate it and failed (https://www.wsj.com/economy/trade/why-its-so-difficult-for-r...). Designing and constantly changing all the processes is more expensive than just having people do it by hand. If you can have AI design the process, then the equation switches.