Facebook“第一夫人”桑德伯格MIT毕业演讲: 你们要成为头脑清醒的乐观派，脚踏实地将技术用之为善（附视频&演讲稿）

Facebook 首席运营官雪莉·桑德伯格（Sheryl Sandberg）于当地时间6月8日星期五，在麻省理工学院2018年毕业典礼上发表演讲，强调了利用技术造福人类的重要性。

在加入 Facebook 之前，桑德伯格曾担任 Google 全球在线销售和运营副总裁，美国前总统比尔·克林顿下属的美国财政部长，麦肯锡咨询公司的管理顾问，以及世界银行的经济学家。

桑德伯格也是 Sheryl Sandberg 和 Dave Goldberg 家族基金会的创始人，该基金会是一个非营利组织，致力于通过 LeanIn.Org和 OptionB.Org 这两个重要网站来建立一个更加平等和和谐的世界。目前她在 Facebook 、迪斯尼、国际妇女组织、ONE 和 SurveyMonkey 等公司担任董事。

桑德伯格于1991年获得哈佛大学学士学位，并于1995年获得哈佛商学院工商管理硕士学位。在这次毕业典礼的演讲中，她鼓励毕业生们（这其中包含了4,500名本科生和6,900名研究生）把教育和创新作为一种促进民主和平等的手段，并不断提到了要控制技术被用之为善的思想。

同时她还谈到了 Facebook 近期的数据泄露和隐私问题，并表示公司团队会努力纠正这个错误。

桑德伯格2018年MIT毕业演讲（中文字幕版）

https://v.qq.com/txp/iframe/player.html?vid=f0685wq3rhc&width=500&height=375&auto=0

桑德伯格2018年MIT毕业演讲稿（双语版）

尊敬的老师们，自豪的家长们，亲爱的朋友们，激动的兄弟姐妹们，特别是2018届毕业生们：祝贺你们，你们做到了！

这实属不易。你们完成了四年的学业。你们克服了2015年的大雪。你们在Muddy Charles酒吧撑过了太多的每周三活动，学到了重要的人生教训：世上根本没有免费的鸡翅。

今天，你们成为了这个世界上最受尊崇的理工学府的毕业生。

哈佛大学的人想让我说“两英里范围内最受尊崇的学府”。我拒绝了，但你们将很快发现校友会是多么地执着。问问68届毕业生就知道了：他们参加的募捐活动比你们吃的鸡翅还要多。

我记得，自己在毕业的时候有一种人生走到拐角、前途未明的感觉。

我是那种会在开学第一天就为了期末考试开始紧张学习的人。对于像我这样的人来说，那种感觉确实令人不安。大学毕业是我人生中第一次看不清前方的道路。我记得当时除了兴奋和憧憬之外，还有那么一点点的令人无法忽视的不确定性。

如果你们清楚地知道自己将来要做什么，请举手。总是有一些人会令人印象深刻。

当年的我，也曾是如此。我不知道哪里最适合我，哪里最能让我有所作为。现在，当我需要建议的时候，我会去找马克·扎克伯格（Mark Zuckerberg），可当年我遇到这些困惑时，他还在读小学。

我只肯定一件事：我不想从商，更是从未想过进入技术行业。

我想，这对你们之中举手的那些人来说是一个提醒：不确定性是年轻人的特权。事情的结果未必如你们所想，但在不确定的人生道路上，你们将获得宝贵的经验与教训。

今天，我想和你们分享我在大学毕业后第一份工作中学到的经验教训。那是一个在印度从事麻风病治疗项目。自从圣经时代以来，社会对待麻风病人就是将他们隔离开来，以免他们将这种疾病传染给别人。

在我大学毕业的时候，治疗麻风病的技术挑战已经解决。医生可以很容易地根据胸口的皮肤斑块，对麻风病作出诊断。药物可以很容易地治疗这种疾病。但歧视依然存在，所以麻风病患者总是讳疾忌医。

我永远不会忘记第一次见到麻风病患者的情景。我伸出手去，他们却畏畏缩缩，因为他们不习惯跟人肢体接触。

真正的突破不是来自于技师和医生，而是来自于当地社区领袖。他们知道，在消除这种疾病之前，必须先消除歧视。所以，他们用当地语言去编写戏剧和歌曲，去社区演出，鼓励人们站出来，不要害怕。

他们明白，我们面临的最大问题和最大机遇不是技术，而是人。

换句话说，这不单与技术有关，还与人有关。

这是你们在麻省理工学院已经学到的经验教训，不仅仅是你们之中获得技术学位的人，还包括学习管理或城市规划的人。要知道，是人创造了技术，是人利用技术来改善生活、提供教育、获得医疗、分享无数的猫咪视频。那些猫别具一格，十分可爱，当然，如果你是爱狗之人，可能会有不一样的看法。

今天，任何人只要能上网，就可以用一句话或者一张图片影响到千千万万的人。这使为善者有了行善的能力，他们可以为了争取平等而游行；重新点燃反性骚扰运动；团结起来支持他们关心的人和事。

但这也使为恶者有了作恶的能力。

当人人都能发声的时候，某些人会挑起仇恨；当人人都能分享的时候，某些人会散布谎言；当人人都能组织的时候，某些人会组织起来，反对我们最珍视的东西。

记者安妮·麦考密克（Anne O'Hare McCormick）写到了新技术的影响。她说，我们已经创造了终极民主，任何人所说的任何话都可以被所有人听到，但她担心，这将引发对立还是带来宽容，是浪费时间还是善用时间。她想知道，这是否解释了“所有强烈的隔阂、高涨的民族主义以及我们这个时代的激愤和神经质”。

她在1932年针对无线电广播写下了这些话。顺便说一句，她是第一个获得普利策新闻奖的女性。

我们现在面对的挑战不是新的挑战，但这并没有降低挑战带来的紧迫感。和前辈们一样，我们必须解决技术带来的种种问题。

我认为，处理这些挑战的选项有三个：

①恐惧退缩；

②一门心思地相信技术，蒙着头往前冲；

③了解技术将如何被人使用，知道人们既能用之以善，也能用之以恶，倾尽全力抑恶扬善。

我鼓励你们选择第三个选项：成为头脑清醒的乐观主义者，知道想要创造出对平等、民主、真相和仁慈有益的技术，就必须谨慎周密，竖起所有可能的屏障，将仇恨、暴力和欺骗拒之门外。

你们可能在想，考虑到Facebook出现的一些问题，我所说的话是不是正中要害？

是的，没错。

我自豪于Facebook在世界各地所做的事，包括促进互联互通，自豪于人们为了捍卫民主而利用Facebook来组织“妇女游行”、“黑人的命也是命（Black Lives Matter）”等活动，自豪于人们在世界各地利用Facebook来发展业务、创造就业。

但在Facebook，我们没有发现危险来临，没有做好充分的准备，来阻止危险的发生。

当你错过某个东西时，当你只看到好的一面、却没有看到坏的一面时，结果是非常痛苦的。当你知道你让人们失望时，心情是非常苦涩的。

在我最艰难的时候，海军学院前院长迈克尔·米勒（Michael Miller）友善地提醒我说，平静的大海永远不可能造就伟大的水手。

他是对的。在我的一生中，让我受益最多的时候正是最艰难的岁月。那是你对自己了解最多的时候。你几乎可以感觉到自己在成长，感觉到成长的痛苦。当你犯了错，你可以更加努力地去纠正错误，甚至更加努力地去为未来可能的失误做好防范。

这就是我现在的工作。做起来不容易，也不可能很快就解决，但我们一定会坚持不懈。

然而，有一个更大的挑战是这里所有人都必须面对的。技术在我们生活中所扮演的角色正变得越来越重要，这意味着我们和技术的关系正在发生变化。

我们必须作出改变。我们必须认识到我们的责任。做个技术员是不够的，我们必须确保技术能为人服务；中立是不够的，甚至是不现实的——塑造工具的既是制作工具的人，也会是使用工具的人。

拥有好想法是不够的，我们必须知道何时应该去制止不好的思想。这很难，因为技术的变化速度超过了社会的变化速度。我读大学的时候，没人有手机。现在，地球上的手机比人还要多。

我们身处于人类历史上最辉煌的时代之一，你们不仅将经历这个时代，未来还将塑造这个时代。

你们中的很多人将从事于改变世界的技术工作。你们将连通世界各地，创造新的岗位，颠覆旧的岗位，让机器拥有思考的能力，让我们获得以前无法想象的通信手段。

我们不是这些变化的旁观者。我们当然不可能是旁观者，趋势并非凭空产生，而是人们所作选择的结果。

我们不是冷漠的造物者，我们有关爱的义务，但即使一片好心，你也可能误入歧途，就像很多人那样，这时你就有责任走回正确的路线。

我们对使用我们产品的人、对我们的同事、对我们自己、对我们的价值观都负有责任。

所以，如果你考虑加入一支团队、一个非政府组织、一间创业公司或者一家企业，可以问问他们是否在做对世界有益的事。

查尔斯河畔另一所院校（指哈佛大学）的研究显示，当我们问“我们可不可以”的时候，我们变得更有创造力；当我们问“我们应不应该”的时候，我们变得更有道德心。

所以两个都要问。

要知道，勇敢去做好事是你的责任，因为确保技术被用之以善是一场永远不会结束的战斗。想要确保技术反映和维护正确的价值观，我们必须带着这样的意识去开发技术，而变得更有意识的最好方法是让更多意见不同、观点不同的人参与进来。

仍然有人质疑员工多样性的价值。他们嗤之以鼻，说这只是让我们感觉更好，而不是真正变得更好。

他们错了。除非我们在开发技术时拥有和利用员工多样性，否则我们无法创造出对平等和民主有益的技术。

如今，科技行业里背景不同的人比以往任何时候都要多，你们这一届毕业生中背景不同的人也比以往任何时候都要多。

但我们行业的步伐仍然赶不上麻省理工学院。即便是最新的技术也可能包含最老的偏见，Facebook员工缺乏多样性是我们未能发现和预防一些事情的根本原因。

解决那个问题是我们所有人的责任，包括你和我，也包括今天毕业的所有人和以后毕业的所有人。

所以，要延续你们在麻省理工学院的那种精神，继续与不同学科、不同性别、不同种族的人接触，跟不同地方、不同观点、不同生活方式、不同信仰的人交流。和他们说话，倾听他们的看法，站在他们的角度去思考问题，就像你们在这里所做的那样，鼓励他们也研究和使用技术。

今天在场所有现任和未来的教育者们，让我们改革教育体系，使人人都有机会学习编程。现在，这已经成为一种基础语言，所有学校都应该传授，以便更多的人有这样一个选择。如果一些孩子学了，而一些孩子没学，这会导致不公平的竞争环境在进入职场之前就已经出现。

所有未来的科技领袖们，你们应该知道，你们有机会纠正错误，而不是错上加错。

理工学府可以成为职场进步的最有力声音之一。没有最好，只有更好。鼓励你的雇主和政策制定者确保临时工都能养家糊口。为所有性别争取同等时间的带薪探亲假，因为我们首先要在家里享有平等，否则职场平等无从谈起，因为没人应该被迫在他们需要的工作和他们关爱的家人之间作出选择。给人们提供丧假，因为当不幸发生时，我们需要彼此抚慰。

让职场里的每一个人都得到尊重。

我们必须制止骚扰，让肇事者和纵容者承担责任。我们必须制止种族歧视和性别歧视，包括已经被普遍接受而不是遭到拒绝和反对的偏见。

我希望你们知道，从进入职场的第一天起，你们就能影响职场。

几个月前，LeanIn.org进行了一项调查，以了解 #MeToo 运动如何影响职场。在很多勇敢的女性大胆直言后，我们发现了一个意料之外的反作用：几乎半数的美国男性管理人员，在单独跟一名女同事开工作会议时会感到不自在，在单独跟一名女同事一起吃工作餐时会感到更不自在。

在这些非正式时刻，男性得到的忠告早就超过了女性，现在有愈演愈烈的趋势。在座的男人们注意了，在你上班的第一周，可能会有人把你拉到一旁，说：“永远不要和女同事单独相处。”

你知道他们错了。你知道如何跟所有人共事。所以，把你的建议告诉他们。

告诉他们，他们有责任公平对待女性，如果他们在跟女性一起吃饭时感到不自在，他们也不应该跟男性一起吃饭。所有人都吃集体午餐。

我以前干过一份工作，老板对我不好，对我团队里的另外两名男同事却很好。他对他们说话和气，语带尊重，但却公然轻视我。我试图跟他谈谈，结果反而更糟。那两名才从学校毕业的男同事挺身而出，情况终于改观。

即使你是办公室里资历最浅的人，你也拥有力量。利用它，好好地利用它。

2018届毕业生们，定义你们的不是你们创造的技术，而是你们创建的团队和人们用你们的技术来做什么。我们必须处理好这个问题，因为我们需要技术来解决最大的挑战。

当我坐在你们今天坐的位置时，我从未想过我会进入技术行业，但在那条不确定的道路上，我学到了新的经验教训，变成了一个技术人员。而技术人员常常是乐观主义者。

我们是乐观主义者，因为我们必须这样。如果你想做前人从未做过的事，很多人会对你说这件事无法实现。

从这所优秀大学毕业的人已经帮助完成了人类基因组测序，为治疗艾滋病铺平了道路。他们还使麻省理工学院的气球出现在哈佛对耶鲁的橄榄球比赛中。

我们是乐观主义者，因为我们掌控着数字。

我们的世界让人觉得两极分化，充满危险，但从很多重要方面来看，比起以往要好得多。一个世纪前，全世界有20亿人，预期寿命为35岁。

现在有70亿人，预期寿命是70岁。

我毕业的时候，三分之一的人极度贫困，现在是十分之一。这个比例仍然过高，但在我们一生中所取得的进步，已经超过了人类历史上的总和。

现在，我们面对的挑战是成为头脑清醒的乐观主义者，用肯尼迪总统的话说就是，乐观，但不抱有幻想：创造可以改善生活的技术，让那些常常无处发声的人可以发声，同时防止技术被滥用；建立可以更好地映射我们身处的这个世界的团队，充分体现世界的复杂性和多样性。

如果我们成功了，当然我们必将成功！我们创造的技术将更好地服务于所有人，而不是一部分人。

麻省理工学院的毕业生、前教员大卫·巴尔的摩（David Baltimore）因为发现病毒和细胞遗传物质之间的相互作用，获得了诺贝尔奖。但在此之前，他协同召集了一群生物学家、律师和医生，一起讨论新的基因编辑技术。他们担心，该技术可能弊大于利，但他们最后认为，改进的机会很大，所以他们制定了自愿伦理准则，继续开展这项研究。

那个决定导致了遗传学和医学领域里最重大的一些研究成果，也确立了一个可供技术人员参照的标准：向视角不同的人寻求建议，深入分析新技术的好处和风险，如果风险可控，就继续下去，哪怕存在不确定性。

2018届的学子们，你们现在是世界上最富有远见的一所学校的毕业生。你们将获得巨大的机遇，会变得非常抢手。你们将利用在这里学到的知识，去解决即将面对的重要挑战。

我希望你们利用你们的影响力，确保技术被用之以善。

技术需要人心。给我们带来快乐的，把我们连接在一起的，才是最重要的。

未来在你们的手中。

祝贺你们！

Esteemed faculty, proud parents, devoted friends, squirming siblings but especially Class of 2018: Congratulations, you made it!

It wasn't always easy. You plowed through four years of problem sets. You conquered the snow of 2015. You survived way too many Weekly Wednesdays at the Muddy Charles [Pub] and learned this important life lesson: There's no such thing as a free chicken wing.

Today, you are graduates of the most revered technical institution in the world. The Harvard people tried to get me to say "most revered institution within a 2-mile radius." I said no, but you'll soon find out how persistent alumni associations can be. Just ask the class of '68: They've been to more fundraisers than you've eaten chicken wings.

One thing I remember from graduation is that feeling of turning one corner and not being able to see clearly around the next.

For someone like me who, yes, very annoyingly started studying for finals the first day of the semester, that was unsettling. Graduation was the first time in my life that the next steps were not clearly laid out. I remember the feeling of excitement and possibility, mixed in with just a teeny bit of crushing uncertainty.

If you know exactly what you're going to do for your career, raise your hand. There are always some. That is impressive.

I did not. I didn't know where I would fit in best or contribute most. These days, when I need advice, I turn to Mark Zuckerberg, but back then, he was in elementary school.

I was sure of only one thing: I didn't want to go into business, and it never even occurred to me to go into technology.

I guess that's a warning for those of you who put your hands up: Certainty is one of the great privileges of youth. Things won't always end up as you think, but you will gain valuable lessons along life's uncertain path.

The lesson I want to share with you today is one I learned in my very first job out of college: working on a leprosy treatment program in India. Since biblical times, leprosy patients were ostracized from communities to prevent the disease from spreading.

By the time I graduated from college, the technical challenges had been solved. Doctors could easily diagnose leprosy that showed up in skin patches on your chest and medicine could easily treat the disease. But the stigma remained, so patients hid their disease instead of seeking care.

I will never forget meeting patients for the first time, extending my arm and watching them recoil because they were not used to even being touched.

The real breakthrough didn't come from technicians or doctors but from local community leaders. They knew that they had to erase the stigma before they could erase the disease, so they wrote plays and songs in local languages and went around the local community, encouraging people to come forward without fear.

They understood that the most difficult problems and the greatest opportunities we have are not technical. They are human.

In other words, it's not just about technology. It's about people.

This is a lesson you've learned here at MIT, and not just those of you graduating with technical degrees, but those who studied management or urban planning, or Course 11 or Course 15, in MIT speak. You know it's people who build technology, and people who use it to make their lives better, to get educated, to get health care, to share an infinite number of cat videos that are all unique and totally adorable — unless you're a dog person.

Today, anyone with an internet connection can inspire millions with a single sentence or a single image. This gives extraordinary power to those who use it to do good — to march for equality; to reignite the movement against sexual harassment; to rally around the things they care about and the people they want to be there for be there for.

But it also empowers those who seek to do harm.

When everyone has a voice, some raise them in hatred. When everyone can share, some share lies. When everyone can organize, some organize against the things we value the most.

Journalist Anne O'Hare McCormick wrote about the impact of new technology. She said we had created the ultimate democracy, where anything said by anyone could be heard by everyone, but she worried about whether it provoked partisanship or tolerance, whether it was time wasted or time well spent. She wondered if it explained "all the furious fence-building, the fanned-up nationalisms, and the angers and neuroses of our time."

She wrote this in 1932, about the radio — and by the way, she was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for journalism.

The fact that the challenges we face today are not new does not make them less pressing. Like the generations before us, we have to solve the problems that our technology brings.

I believe there are three ways we can deal with these challenges: We can retreat in fear,we can barrel ahead with a single-minded belief in our technology or we can fight like hell to do all the good we can do with the understanding that what we build will be used by people and people are capable of great beauty and great cruelty.

I encourage you to choose the third option: To be clear-eyed optimists; to see that building technology that supports equality, democracy, truth and kindness means looking around corners -- and throwing up every possible roadblock against hate, violence and deception.

You might be thinking, given some of the issues Facebook has had, isn't what I'm saying hitting pretty close to home?

Yes. It is.

I am proud of what Facebook has done around the world — proud of the connections people have created. Proud of how people use Facebook to organize for democracy, the Women's March, Black Lives Matter. Proud of how people use Facebook to start and grow businesses and create jobs all around the world.

But at Facebook, we didn't see all the risks coming, and we didn't do enough to stop them.

It's painful when you miss something, when you make the mistake of believing so much in the good you are seeing that you don't see the bad. It's hard when you know that you let people down.

In the middle of one of my toughest moments, Michael Miller, former Superintendent of the Naval Academy, kindly reached out to remind me that smooth seas never make good sailors.

He's right. The times in my life that I have learned the most have definitely been the hardest. That is when you will learn the most about yourself. You can almost feel yourself growing; you can feel the growing pains. When you own your mistakes, you can work harder to correct them and even harder to prevent the next ones.

That's my job now. It won't be easy and it's not going to be fast. But we will see it through.

Yet the larger challenge is one all of us here must face. The role of technology in our lives is growing and that means our relationship with technology is changing.

We have to change too. We have to recognize the full weight of our responsibilities. It's not enough to be technologists, we have to make sure that technology serves people. It's not enough or even possible to be neutral. Tools are shaped by the minds that make them as well as the hands that use them.

It's not enough to have a good idea, we have to know when to stop a bad one. This is hard because technology changes faster than society. When I was in college, no one had a cell phone. Today there are more cell phones than people on earth.

We are in one of the most remarkable moments in human history and you will not just live through it, you will shape it.

Many of you will work on technologies that will change the world. You will connect the rest of the world, create new jobs and disrupt old ones, give machines new powers to think and give us the means to communicate in ways we haven't even thought of.

We are not passive observers of these changes. We can't be. Trends do not just happen, they are the result of choices people make.

We are not indifferent creators, we have a duty of care and when even with the best of intentions you go astray, as many of us have, you have the responsibility to course correct.

We are accountable to the people who use what we build, to our colleagues, to ourselves and to our values.

So if you are thinking about joining a team, an NGO, a startup or a company, ask if they are doing good for the world.

Research at that other school down the river shows that we become more creative when we ask "Could we?" And we become more ethical when we ask "Should we?"

So ask both.

Know that you have an obligation to never shy away from doing the right thing, because the fight to ensure tech is used for good is never over; to make sure that technology reflects and upholds the right values, we have to build with awareness, and the best way to be more aware is to have more people in the room with different voices and different views.

There are still skeptics out there when it comes to the value of diversity. They dismiss it as something we do to feel better, not to be better.

They are wrong. We cannot build technology for equality and democracy unless we have and we harness diversity in its creation.

More people with more diverse backgrounds are working in technology than ever before and are graduating in your class today than ever before.

But our industry is still lagging at MIT. Even the newest technology can contain the oldest prejudices and our lack of diversity is at the root of some of the things we fail to see and prevent.

It is up to all of us to fix that, people like me, and people like you; everyone graduating today and all the graduates to come.

So continue the example you have lived at MIT. Continue to engage with people outside your discipline, your gender, your race. Talk with people who grew up in different places, who believe different things, who live and worship differently than you do. Talk with them, listen to them, get their perspectives as you have done here and encourage them to work in and with technology too.

To all the current and future educators here today, let's reform our educational system so we give everyone the opportunity to learn to code. This is a basic language now that needs to be taught in all of our schools so that more people have a choice. When some kids learn it and some don't, that creates an unequal playing field long before people go into the workforce.

And to all the future leaders in tech, that's you. Know that you have a chance to right wrongs, not reinforce them.

Tech institutions can be some of the strongest voices for progress in the workplace, but we can always do better. Encourage your employers and policymakers to ensure that everyone, including contractors, earns a living wage. Fight for paid family leave with equal time for all genders because equality in the workplace will not happen until we have equality in the home and because no one should be forced to choose between the job they need and the family they love. Give people bereavement leave because when tragedy strikes, we need to be there for each other.

And build workplaces where everyone, everyone, is treated with respect.

We need to stop harassment and hold both perpetrators and enablers accountable and we need to make a personal commitment to stop racism and sexism, including the expressions of bias that become commonplace and accepted instead of rejected and fought.

I want you to know that you can impact the workplace from the very day you enter it.

A few months ago, LeanIn.org surveyed people to understand how the #MeToo movement was influencing work. After so many brave women spoke out, we found evidence of an unintended backlash: Almost half of male managers in the U.S. are now uncomfortable having a work meeting alone with a woman and even more uncomfortable having a work dinner alone with a female colleague.

These are the informal moments where men have long gotten more mentoring than women -- and now it looks like it could get worse. For the men here: Someone may pull you aside in your first week at work and say, "never being alone with a woman."

You know they're wrong. You know how to work with all people. So give them advice instead.

Tell them they have the responsibility to make access equal for women and that if they don't feel comfortable having dinner with women, they shouldn't have dinner with men. Group lunches for everyone.

In one of my early jobs, I had a boss who treated me quite differently from the two men on my team and not in a good way. He spoke to them with kindness and respect but belittled me publicly. I tried to talk to him, but that made it worse. My two male teammates right out of school themselves stepped up and it stopped.

Even if you're the most junior person in the room, you have power. Use it, and use it well.

Class of 2018, it's not the technology you build that will define you. It's the teams you build and what people do with your technology. We have to get this right because we need technology to solve our greatest challenges.

When I sat where you are sitting today, I never thought I would work in technology, but somewhere along that uncertain path, I learned new lessons and became a technologist. And technologists have always been optimists.

We're optimists because we have to be. If you want to do something that has never been done before, so many people will tell you it cannot be done.

Graduates of this amazing university have helped sequence the human genome, paved the way for the treatment of AIDS and made an MIT balloon appear in the middle of the Harvard-Yale football game.

We're optimists because we run the numbers.

Our world can feel polarized and dangerous, but in many critical ways, we are so much better off. A century ago, global life expectancy was 35 for 2 billion people.

Today it is 70, for 7 billion.

When I graduated, 1 in 3 people lived in extreme poverty. Today it is 1 in 10. It is still way too high but we have made more progress in our lifetimes than in all of human history.

Our challenge now is to be clear-eyed optimists, or to paraphrase President Kennedy, optimists without illusions: To build technology that improves lives and gives voice to those who often have none while preventing misuse, to build teams that better reflect the world around us with all its complexity and diversity.

If we succeed — and we'll succeed — we will build technology that better serves not just some of us, but all of us.

MIT graduate and former faculty member David Baltimore won a Nobel Prize for his work on the interaction between viruses and the genetic material of the cell. But before that, he helped bring biologists, lawyers and physicians together to debate new gene editing technology. They were worried that it had the potential to cause more harm than good, but they concluded that the opportunities for progress were too great, so they created voluntary ethical guidelines and continued the research.

That decision led to some of the greatest advances in genetic science and medicine.

It also set a standard that we as technologists can follow: Seek advice from people with different perspectives, look deeply at the risks as well as the benefits of new technology and if those risks can be managed, keep going even in the face of uncertainty.

Class of 2018, you are now graduates of one of the most forward-thinking places on earth.

You will have tremendous opportunities and you will be highly sought after. You will use what you learned here to work on some of the most critical questions we face.

I hope you will use your influence to make sure technology is a force for good in the world. Technology needs a human heartbeat; the things that bring us joy and the things that bring us together are the things that matter most.

The future is in your hands. Congratulations!

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作者：雪莉·桑德伯格（Sheryl Sandberg），原载：精彩英语演讲；本文版权归属作者/译者/原载媒体。

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