Exactly what I was thinking.

Also: when is this coming to KiCad? :)

PS: It would also be nice to apply a similar algorithm to graph drawing (e.g. trying to optimize for human readability instead of electrical performance).

The issue is that in order to optimize for human readability you'll need a huge number of human evaluations of graphs?

Maybe start with minimization of some metric based on number of edge crossings, edge lengths and edge bends?