There are a lot of areas which need critical breakthroughs to solve the increasingly critical circumstances casued by increasing population, increasing buying p

There are a lot of areas which need critical breakthroughs to solve the increasingly critical circumstances casued by increasing population, increasing buying power and limited resourcs. The list would be a very very long. But the single area that can accelerate developments in almost all areas is easy availability of massive, cheap computation and probably automated - impying AI, and the ability to use that.