????道格拉斯?梅里爾早已習慣了克服各種挑戰。梅里爾小時在阿肯色斯州長大，幼年由于罹患聽覺神經感染，他曾失去聽力長達三年之久，后來只得重新學習說話。但他人生的挫折還遠遠不止于此，高中時，梅里爾被診斷出患有閱讀障礙。因此梅里爾在人生的早年就已經明白，自己的成功要比別人付出更多的努力。后來梅里爾從陶沙大學（University of Tulsa）獲得了社會學與經濟學學位，然后赴普林斯頓大學（Princeton University）深造，獲得認知科學博士學位，一路打拼，最后當上了谷歌公司（Google）的信息總監。

????2010年，梅里爾創立了一家名叫ZestFinance的公司。這家公司有100名員工，主要利用人工智能、機器學習和大數據等技術，幫助借款人分析潛在貸款者的信用風險。ZestFinance旨在幫助“資金不足”的人以較低的利率獲得貸款，經過2007年的金融危機后，這無疑是一個特殊的挑戰。

????現年43歲的梅里爾居住在洛杉磯。近日他接受了《財富》雜志的專訪。

????1. 你最欣賞的科技界人士是誰？為什么？

????我最欣賞的人已經過世很久，他叫馬休?方丹?毛利。他是19世紀美國的一名海軍上尉，當時的軍艦還是帆船。他曾是一艘軍艦的艦長，經常行駛從美國西海岸到日本的航線。有時航線的海況很好，也有時風浪十分惡劣。像差不多所有其他船長一樣，他只知道一條去東京的航線，不過每個船長的航線多多少少是不太一樣的。

????后來他不幸受了傷，沒法再航海了，于是他打算找點別的事做。他偶然發現，有些艦長選擇的航線在一年的有些時候海況較好，但同樣在一年的其它時候海況較差。另外，所有艦長從一個城市到另一個城市都有自己的習慣航線，這些航線在一年中的海況都有好有差。于是他讓艦長們把他們的航海日志交給自己，由他對所有人的航線進行匯總，然后將匯總后的航線交給艦長們。

????結果他發現了信風對航線的影響，并且發現全球各地的海況會隨著氣候而變化，因此兩地之間的最佳航線也會隨著時間變化。他基本上是采用了眾包的方式篩選出了全球各地的最佳航線。如果你注意看毛利之前的航線數據，你會發現城市之間的海路是隨機的。在毛利之后的10到20年里，有了航線眾包的概念，航路變得越來越固定，并且對季節性氣候很敏感。海洋對全球政治經濟有重大影響，它是貿易和信息的支柱，而毛利帶來了重大的變化。

????2. 你欣賞哪些公司？為什么？

????我的回答稍微偏離你的問題，我最欣賞的是桑迪胡克希望基金會（Sandy Hook Promise Foundation）。這個基金會是幾年前的桑迪胡克慘案發生后成立的一個組織。它是由部分學生家長創立的，也有不少硅谷風投家參與到這項事業中。他們希望通過風投的模式找到鞏固校園安全的方法。他們希望讓全世界的人想出有意思的點子，看看能否通過種子基金資助這些辦法以減少校園暴力。

????3. 最讓你感到興奮的科技領域是什么？

????生物科技。近幾年，計算機性能和數學運算能力有了驚人的提高，因此生物科技領域也發生了巨大的變化，從一開始連提出有趣的醫學問題都很難，到現在已經可以開始把某些想法整合到一起。比如現在有一家叫Celmatix的生物技術公司，它可以就生育問題給出非常精確的指導。比如如果你要嘗試體外受精的話，他們就會做幾個測試并且收集你的數據，然后他們可能會說，你可能更適合這種方法或那種方法。他們關注的方面很多?，F在有一些公司正在這個領域做一些很有趣的事，這家公司就是一個例子。

????4. 有些人也想從事和你這一行，你對他們有什么建議？

????我認為人們可能經常會獲得比如多上一些科學課程或者在一家公司實習之類的建議，這都很好。但是我有一個很有用的經驗，那就是我讀書讀得很廣泛，像歷史、名人傳記、小說、詩歌都有涉獵。這些廣泛的信息能為我帶來真正影響我思考的東西。我的建議是多隨機地閱讀一些東西。幸運的是現在閱讀的門檻很低，我有很多書都是在Kindle電子書上讀的。

????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).

????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.

????Merrill, 43, is based in Los Angeles. He spoke with Fortune.

????1. Who in technology do you admire most? Why?

????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.

????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.

????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.

????2. Which companies do you admire? Why?

????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.

????3. Which area of technology excites you most?

????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.

????4. What advice would you give to someone who wants to do what you do?

????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.