I'd vote for by CRISPR and the rest of bio-technology, e.g., as in Eric Lander and his MIT lectures at YouTube, for, my guesses, better crops, healthier farm animals, attacking insects, e.g., mosquitoes, attacking causes of infections, for curing some of the remaining difficult diseases, especially cancer.<p>A second guess, or a guess for second place, would be <i>artificial general intelligence</i> (AGI) if and only if someone or some team or project gets going on that problem and has some good, basic, enabling ideas.<p>I have some ideas, but since they really are just <i>architectural</i> or <i>heuristic</i> and not mathematical and not in code I can make only wild guesses for how good the ideas are.<p>A third guess, or a guess for third place, is my startup and its crucial core enabling technology, i.e., some original applied math I derived based on some advanced pure/applied math prerequisites. Why? In broad terms the core technology of the startup makes some powerful progress on <i>meaning</i>. Is this progress full AGI? Nope. Does the progress fully solve the problem of meaning? Nope. To repeat, IMHO the progress is "powerful".<p>Is the technology widely applicable? The range of applications should be somewhat wider than the application of my startup, e.g., as some core technology in some infrastructure for some more applications, but for now my original applied math is proprietary and in my startup is locked up and invisible in my server farm.<p>Why third in this list? Because it doesn't deserve first or second, but, if people like the results of my applied math and what I've programmed, then my startup can well become a big thing, big enough to be third on this list in a few years.<p>Gee, today I'm wrestling with Microsoft's NTBACKUP. So, today it's grunt work!