What I keep hearing they are close to is Smart Translation software. You’ll be able to have the software package on your smartphone for say, Mandarin or some other language. You will be able to then go to China and speak into your phone in English and have it speak that back in Mandarin. The local can then speak Mandarin and the smartphone will repeat that back in English.
That would make communications a lot easier. Even if its not perfect or eloquent, you’d at least be able to communicate with a taxi driver, a waiter, the hotel staff, a customer or other business partner, etc.
Technologies that I think would do us the most good:
1. a cheap means of desalinating large amounts of water. About 1/5th of the land surface of the Earth is desert. Another 1/5th is marginal due to lack of water. Imagine if we could just make the marginal land fully productive and make the deserts at least marginal. That would be a huge plus for agriculture and wealth creation not to mention alleviating the water shortages in many places like Capetown South Africa, like California, like Western Australia etc.
2. Synthetic meat/regenerative medicine. Both would use the same technology. Meat production has a significant financial and environmental cost. Imagine being able to grow/produce the meat in factories without having to deal with feeding the livestock, watering them, dealing with their waste, etc. Also imagine your liver goes bad and they are able to take your own DNA and grow you a new healthy one. There would be no rejection issues since it would be your DNA. That would extend lifespans and alleviate human suffering on a huge scale.
3. Nuclear Fusion. The holy grail. Forget wind and solar and all that. This would blow them away. It would enable us to produce virtually unlimited amounts of energy and since its fusion rather than fission, there would be hardly any waste.
I got an ad and for about 250 dollars, y'get this unit that will translate your native language into a desired language and the other language speaks and gets translated into your native language.
here's a page I found after starting my reply
What about when the amount of fuel you put into a reactor is all used up? When the first element is all fused, what happens next?