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Douglas Merrill is used to overcoming challenges. As a child growing up in Arkansas, he was deaf for three years -- the result of an auditory nerve infection -- and had to relearn how to speak. The difficulty was made more problematic by his dyslexia, which was not diagnosed until high school. At an early age, Merrill learned that he could achieve his goals, but his path wouldn't always be the obvious one. After earning degrees in sociology and economics from the University of Tulsa, Merrill went on to receive a Ph.D. in cognitive science from Princeton and eventually became the chief information officer at Google (GOOG).
道格拉斯·梅里尔早已习惯了克服各种挑战。梅里尔小时在阿肯色斯州长大，幼年由于罹患听觉神经感染，他曾失去听力长达三年之久，后来只得重新学习说话。但他人生的挫折还远远不止于此，高中时，梅里尔被诊断出患有阅读障碍。因此梅里尔在人生的早年就已经明白，自己的成功要比别人付出更多的努力。后来梅里尔从陶沙大学（University of Tulsa）获得了社会学与经济学学位，然后赴普林斯顿大学（Princeton University）深造，获得认知科学博士学位，一路打拼，最后当上了谷歌公司（Google）的信息总监。
Today, he runs ZestFinance, a 100-person company that he started in 2010. ZestFinance uses a combination of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and big data to help lenders assess the credit risk of potential borrowers. The company's mission is to help people who are "under-banked" find access to credit at lower interest rates, a particular challenge since the 2007 banking crisis.
2010年，梅里尔创立了一家名叫ZestFinance的公司。这家公司有100名员工，主要利用人工智能、机器学习和大数据等技术，帮助借款人分析潜在贷款者的信用风险。ZestFinance旨在帮助“资金不足”的人以较低的利率获得贷款，经过2007年的金融危机后，这无疑是一个特殊的挑战。
Merrill, 43, is based in Los Angeles. He spoke with Fortune.
现年43岁的梅里尔居住在洛杉矶。近日他接受了《财富》杂志的专访。
1. Who in technology do you admire most? Why?
1. 你最欣赏的科技界人士是谁？为什么？
I admire a guy who's been dead a very long time. His name is Matthew Fontaine Maury. Maury was a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy in the 1800s, when ships had sails. He was the captain of a ship, and the routes that he tended to sail were from west coast of the U.S. towards Japan. Sometimes the routes were great, and sometimes the routes were very rough. Like almost all ship captains, he knew exactly one way to get to Tokyo, but every captain's path had slight differences.
我最欣赏的人已经过世很久，他叫马休o方丹o毛利。他是19世纪美国的一名海军上尉，当时的军舰还是帆船。他曾是一艘军舰的舰长，经常行驶从美国西海岸到日本的航线。有时航线的海况很好，也有时风浪十分恶劣。像差不多所有其他船长一样，他只知道一条去东京的航线，不过每个船长的航线多多少少是不太一样的。
Sadly he was injured. Unable to be a ship captain anymore, he was looking around for something to do. He stumbled upon the fact that other captains had other routes that performed better in some times of the year and worse in some times of the year. He noticed that all captains have ways to go from same city to same city, and they all had different times of the year when they were good. He started telling captains that if they gave him their log book, then he would give it back later with the sum of their routes with everyone else's routes.
后来他不幸受了伤，没法再航海了，于是他打算找点别的事做。他偶然发现，有些舰长选择的航线在一年的有些时候海况较好，但同样在一年的其它时候海况较差。另外，所有舰长从一个城市到另一个城市都有自己的习惯航线，这些航线在一年中的海况都有好有差。于是他让舰长们把他们的航海日志交给自己，由他对所有人的航线进行汇总，然后将汇总后的航线交给舰长们。
What he discovered were the trade winds and the notion that weather changes throughout the year and as a result the time to travel changes over time. He basically crowdsourced routes all over the world. If you look at the data over time before Maury, the routes were kind of random between cities; they were all over the board. So the next 10 to 20 years after Maury had this idea of crowdsourcing routes, the routes got more and more defined and sensitive to seasonal weather patterns. The sea is how everything in the world works; it's the backbone of trade and information. Maury provided massive change.
结果他发现了信风对航线的影响，并且发现全球各地的海况会随着气候而变化，因此两地之间的最佳航线也会随着时间变化。他基本上是采用了众包的方式筛选出了全球各地的最佳航线。如果你注意看毛利之前的航线数据，你会发现城市之间的海路是随机的。在毛利之后的10到20年里，有了航线众包的概念，航路变得越来越固定，并且对季节性气候很敏感。海洋对全球政治经济有重大影响，它是贸易和信息的支柱，而毛利带来了重大的变化。
2. Which companies do you admire? Why?
2. 你欣赏哪些公司？为什么？
I want to go slightly off the beaten path and talk about the Sandy Hook Promise Foundation. Sandy Hook Promise is a group that was founded after the Sandy Hook tragedy a couple of years ago. It was founded by a group of parents, and a bunch of Silicon Valley VCs are in it, and they are trying to find ways to improve school security by using venture capital-ish formats. They try to let people in the world come up with interesting ideas and see if they can seed fund those ideas to find interesting potential ways to reduce school violence.
我的回答稍微偏离你的问题，我最欣赏的是桑迪胡克希望基金会（Sandy Hook Promise Foundation）。这个基金会是几年前的桑迪胡克惨案发生后成立的一个组织。它是由部分学生家长创立的，也有不少硅谷风投家参与到这项事业中。他们希望通过风投的模式找到巩固校园安全的方法。他们希望让全世界的人想出有意思的点子，看看能否通过种子基金资助这些办法以减少校园暴力。
3. Which area of technology excites you most?
3. 最让你感到兴奋的科技领域是什么？
Biotech. If you look at the incredible increase in computational power and math power, even in the past few years, there has been rapid change from having a very hard time asking the interesting medical questions to being able to start putting together some thoughts. There are companies like Celmatix, a biotech company that gives you very precise guidance on reproductive and fertility issues. For example, if you are on a particular path to have IVF, they take a couple of tests and they gather data about you, and they may say, actually you're probably a candidate for this procedure vs. that procedure. They care a lot. They're an example of a company that is doing something interesting in the field.
生物科技。近几年，计算机性能和数学运算能力有了惊人的提高，因此生物科技领域也发生了巨大的变化，从一开始连提出有趣的医学问题都很难，到现在已经可以开始把某些想法整合到一起。比如现在有一家叫Celmatix的生物技术公司，它可以就生育问题给出非常精确的指导。比如如果你要尝试体外受精的话，他们就会做几个测试并且收集你的数据，然后他们可能会说，你可能更适合这种方法或那种方法。他们关注的方面很多。现在有一些公司正在这个领域做一些很有趣的事，这家公司就是一个例子。
4. What advice would you give to someone who wants to do what you do?
4. 有些人也想从事和你这一行，你对他们有什么建议？
I think oftentimes people get advice to take more science classes or go do an internship at a firm, and that's all good. But what I have found useful is that I read very broadly. I read history, biography, fiction, poetry. I read about fields that I know nothing about at all, like biotech. I find that having that broad-based information allows me to stumble across things that really influence my thinking. My advice would be to go read something random. Luckily the barrier to entry for reading is very low, so I have a lot of books on my Kindle.
我认为人们可能经常会获得比如多上一些科学课程或者在一家公司实习之类的建议，这都很好。但是我有一个很有用的经验，那就是我读书读得很广泛，像历史、名人传记、小说、诗歌都有涉猎。这些广泛的信息能为我带来真正影响我思考的东西。我的建议是多随机地阅读一些东西。幸运的是现在阅读的门槛很低，我有很多书都是在Kindle电子书上读的。
5. What is the best advice you ever received?
5. 你得到过的最好的建议是什么？
When I was at Google, one of the things I did was help run the IPO, and one day when I was going through part of the process, I made a big mistake and messed something up that was important. I immediately flagged the thing, but I got a call from Eric Schmidt, the CEO, who wanted to meet me in a conference room. So I'm running over there, and when I get there he says, "Hey, I understand that you did X." And I said, "Yes, I did, and I'm sorry." Eric looked at me, put his hand on my shoulder said, "Okay. Don't ever do it again, but I still love you." It's not terribly helpful advice, but it reminds me that people make mistakes and simultaneously you have to hold them accountable for those things and remind them that they're people that you value and not just a mistake. That was incredibly valuable for me.
我在谷歌工作的时候，曾经帮公司运作过IPO事宜。有一天在做一项跟IPO有关的工作时，我犯一个大错，搞砸了一件重要的事，我马上注意到了这个错误，但是我也接到了CEO埃里克o施密特的电话，他让我到会议室见他。于是我马上跑到会议室，等我到了之后，他对我说：“嘿，我知道你犯了个错。”我说：“是的，我很抱歉。”埃里克看着我，把手放到我肩膀上说：“好，以后别再犯了，我仍然爱你。”虽然这不是一个非常有用的建议，但它提醒我，人是会犯错的，同时你得告诉他们要为自己犯的错负责，还要让他们知道，他们仍然是你重视的人，而不仅仅是一个犯了错的人。这对我非常有价值。
6. What challenges are facing your business right now?
6. 你的公司现在面临哪些挑战？
The regulatory environment for lending is very complicated. There are state laws, there are federal laws, so we're continuing to find regulation's role vis-à-vis other elements. We're really trying to help, but everything is inherently regulatory. It's a good challenge in that the industry will be better by increasingly strong and well-intentioned regulation.
目前借贷的监管环境非常复杂。各州有各州的法律，还有联邦的法律，所以我们还在继续研究监管机构和其它因素扮演的角色。我们虽然很想提供帮助，但是一切从根本上都离不开监管的因素。这是一个很好的挑战，因为有了力度日益增强的健康的监管，整个行业会变得越来越好。
7. If you could have done anything differently in your career, what would it have been?
7. 如果你的职业生涯中有一件事能从头来过，那会是什么？
I would have started a company earlier. I went around to a lot of other firms, and I always enjoyed it, but I didn't necessarily have enough confidence in my own ideas to start my own business. Now I'm going on four years, and I love it. I learn something new every day. But it's also hard because there are no "B" days; everything has to be an "A" day.
我会更早开始创业。我曾经在很多其他公司干过，我也很享受这个过程，但我不一定非要等到对我的创业理念拥有十足的信心了才去创立自己的公司。现在我已经创业四年了，而且我很喜欢这个过程。我每天都会学到新东西。但是创业也是很艰难的，因为你不能得“B”，必须把每件事都做到“A”。
8. What is one goal -- either personal or professional -- that you would like to accomplish during your lifetime?
8. 你这一生希望完成的个人目标或者职业目标是什么？
I want to eat dinner at the White House. I am a distant aficionado of politics. I find the political process fascinating.
我想在白宫吃顿饭。我是一个跟政治不沾边的政治爱好者，但我觉得政治非常有趣。
9. What was the last book you read?
9. 你最近读过的一本书是什么？
I'm going to go in a very strange direction. The last book that I just finished last night was by a guy named Michael Easton. Michael is a friend of mine who is an actor but also a writer of graphic novels. He wrote one recently called Soul Stealer. He gave it to me for Christmas in a hardback cover, and I was just now getting around to reading it. It's interesting to me that, at 43, I can still read comic books. The style of how the art is produced is different from when I was younger. The physical art is different. It's much darker, and the story is grittier, more painful, and disturbing on multiple levels. It's not just pure violence, it's actually hard to read; it's sad and a little bit upsetting. The ability to use this two-dimensional, small frame art to capture the emotional color of a city is challenging and fascinating. What a cool application of art.
就读书而言，我正在走一条非常不同的路。我昨晚刚读完的一本书是一个叫迈克尔o伊斯顿的人写的。迈克尔是我的一个朋友，他既是一名演员，也是一位漫画小说作家。他最近刚写了一本叫《偷魂者》（Soul Stealer）的书。他把一本硬封皮的精装书当成圣诞礼物送给了我，我最近刚抽出时间打算读一读。我觉得最有意思的是，我今年虽然已经43岁了，但还能看得进漫画书。现在这种艺术的表现形式与我年轻的时候已经不一样了。整个艺术基调更加阴暗，从很多层面上看，故事都更曲折、更痛苦、更纠结。它不仅仅是纯粹的暴力。实际上它读起来很艰难，它是悲伤的，而且有点让人难受。能够用这种二维的、小格子的艺术捕捉一个城市的情绪色彩，这种能力非常有挑战性，而且非常吸引人。这真是艺术的一种很酷的应用。
10. What is one unique or quirky habit that you have?
10. 你有什么独特的习惯或爱好吗？
The fingernails of my left hand are painted with black nail polish. I don't know why it's one hand and not two. I don't know why it's my off hand. I have no story other than I like how it looks. I used to do it myself but then I realized that I suck at it. Now I pay someone to do it. One of the benefits of our company is that we have a manicurist who comes in every week, so I have her do it.
我左手的指甲涂了黑色的指甲油。我不知道为什么我只涂了一只手而不是两只手，也不知道为什么是左手而不是右手。除了觉得好看，我也没有别的解释。我以前都是自己涂的，后来我意识到自己涂得很难看。现在我付钱请别人替我涂。我们公司的一个好处之一就是，我们请了一个美甲师每周来我们公司，所以我都是请她给我涂。
