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苏姿丰给MIT2026毕业生的寄语：最优秀的人会想办法创造自己的运气
发布时间：2026-07-17 10:58 文章来源：管理智慧 作者:智慧君 点击：次
翻译 | 智慧君
出品 | 管理智慧
编者按
这是一篇毕业致辞，却不大像我们常见的那种致辞。
我们见惯了讲台上的高谈阔论——谈使命，谈愿景，谈战略，谈价值观，听上去字字千钧，落到地上却轻飘飘的，抓不住，也用不上。苏姿丰偏不这么讲。她站在麻省理工的讲台上，讲的全是实实在在的事：怎么把一道看上去无解的难题拆开来，一步一步啃下去；怎么烧坏过几个电路，又把那东西重新做对；怎么在压根不知道答案的时候，仍旧有把握把它琢磨出来。这套本事，她给起了个名字，叫"工程师的本能"。
当年斯隆也是地道的理工男，也是懂得向流程要效率、向难题要出路。后来的福特、格鲁夫、韦尔奇、任正非，无一不是如此。可惜直到今天，还有不少做企业的人不明白这个理儿，整天热衷于搞人际关系，热衷于文史哲，把本来简单的事情越说越玄，到末了，活像那只被青蛙问住的蜈蚣，连路都不会走了。
我们把这篇演讲译成中文，不为别的，只想请做企业、带队伍的朋友看一看：技术的浪头一波接一波，可决定未来长什么样的，从来不是技术本身，而是人——是那些肯下功夫、敢担责任、能自己给自己挣运气的人。这一点，斯隆懂，苏姿丰也懂。
演讲全文（中文）
大家下午好！康布鲁斯校长，戈伦伯格主席，各位理事，各位老师，各位家长和朋友，还有最要紧的——麻省理工学院2026届的毕业生们，祝贺你们！这是你们自己挣来的。
说句实话，站在这里的感觉，和我事先想的很不一样。这些年我演讲过不知多少回，可这一回不同，这一回很私人。偏偏又赶上墨菲定律——这一周我把嗓子给弄哑了，所以要是听着有点儿费劲，请大家多担待。但能站在你们中间，我心里头是真高兴。
我先讲讲自己的事。1986年秋天，我来到麻省理工，父母把我送到Next House宿舍楼就走了。那年我17岁，出生在台湾，在纽约皇后区长大，自认为数学还算不错。然后呢，我走进了6.01和6.02这两门课的课堂。也就两个星期，我就明白了一件事：在麻省理工，数学很好很好的人，一抓一大把。我到现在还记得，盯着头几份习题集发愣，心里直犯嘀咕——天哪，这也太难了。
在那之前，我几乎没有通宵熬过夜。大一头一回通宵，是个新鲜体验，可一帮同学凑在一块儿熬，居然熬得挺开心。
麻省理工有一种了不起的本事，它能把你往前推，推到你自己都没想到的地方。你跟一道题死磕，烧坏一两个电路（没错，你们当中有些人估计也干过），然后不知怎么的，那东西竟然运转起来了。就在那一刻你忽然明白，原来自己真能造出一个实实在在的东西来。也是从那时候起，我开始觉得自己像个工程师了。
麻省理工最好的东西之一，其实是UROP——本科生研究机会计划，它让你在本科阶段就能上手真刀真枪的科研。这件事，实实在在改变了我这一生。我的第一个UROP，是在39号楼汉克·史密斯教授的实验室。阿南萨告诉我，那栋楼如今要拆了、要搬了。当时我替一位研究生做X射线光刻用的掩膜基板。
我得老实说，那会儿我压根不知道这到底是在干什么。可我头一回穿上了防尘服，走进无尘室，在小小的2英寸晶圆上做起器件来——这在当时，已经算是最顶尖的活儿了。
我很快就学会了小心翼翼，因为那些晶圆实在太娇气，我可不想当那个把它弄坏的人。我做了一大堆实验，多数都不像我们预想的那样成功，那就调一调，再试一回。可对我来说，这是天底下最带劲的事儿。
这是头一回，我不再只是坐在教室里学技术，而是成了一支队伍里的一员，跟大家一道去探一个未知的东西。我还记得当时心里想：哎呀，我们竟然能造出这么小的东西——小到能装进一块硬币大小的芯片里，可它的能耐，却足以改变整个世界。也就是从那时起，我爱上了半导体。
再往后，我有幸跟德米特里·安东尼亚迪斯教授一起做事，他后来成了我的博士导师。也正是在他那里，我才算真正学会了怎么去解决问题。我记得，在无尘室里一连泡上好几个星期做器件，然后把晶圆端到测试实验室一测，结果跟我预想的完全是两码事。于是我又回到德米特里的办公室，我们俩一块儿琢磨，下一步该怎么走。
现在回头看，我在麻省理工长进最大的，大概就是那段日子。因为一点一点地，我从一个刚入门、还在摸门道的研究生，变成了一个能做原创研究、能给这个领域添上一点新东西的人。
也是在这个过程里，我开始相信自己了。这种相信，不是说我总能知道答案，而是说——哪怕我不知道答案，我也有把握把它琢磨出来。
如今我才想明白，麻省理工教给我的，远不止半导体器件物理这点东西。mens et manus——手与脑，说白了，就是脑子要会想，手上也要会做。当学生那会儿，我以为这不过是一句校训；现在我觉得，这句话恰恰道出了麻省理工最特别的地方。
麻省理工教你往深里想，可它同时教你动手去造，教你把想法拿去试，教你在第一次实验、甚至第五次实验都失败之后，还能接着干下去。日子久了，你就会慢慢相信，那些曾经看上去根本不可能解决的难题，自己其实是解得开的。离开校园很久很久以后，这种感觉，我一直揣在身上。
进了IBM，我发现自己又得从头来过。IBM有几十万员工，我才25岁，心里直打鼓——在这么大一家公司里，我一个人能起什么作用？可我很快就明白了一件要紧的事：搞工程这一行，根本不在乎你多大岁数，它只在乎你有没有好点子。
我的一位前辈跟我说过一句话，我一直没忘：迎着最难的问题冲上去。当时我未必真懂这话的分量，可现在我明白了，这是我这辈子听过的最好的一句忠告——难题这东西，最能让你看清自己究竟有几斤几两。
再往后跳一段。12年前，我得到一个机会，去验证这句话到底对不对——我有机会出任AMD的首席执行官。AMD这家公司底子不薄，潜力很大，可前几年日子过得很苦。我的几位前辈都觉得，接这个活儿，风险不小。可在我看来，这正是我做梦都想要的位置，是我这么多年一直在为之做准备的事情：站在技术最前沿，去啃那些真正要紧的难题。
上来要做的头一件事，就是想清楚：我们这家公司长大以后，究竟想成为一个什么样的公司。这么大一家企业，得先把这件事想明白。我们押下了一个长远的赌注——高性能计算，会是未来最要紧的一项技术。然后，我们给那支能干的团队腾出地方，让他们放开手脚去想大事。
接下来的好几年里，我们做出了一批技术，撑起了世界上最强大的那些计算机。我可以告诉大家，这一路走下来，麻省理工教给我的每一样本事，我都用上了，而且还不止于此。我一直想给它找个说法，最后我觉得，把它叫作“工程师的本能”，大概是最贴切的。
所谓工程师的本能，就是面对一个看上去无解的难题，能把它拆开来，一步一步、有条有理地啃下去。但我还悟出了另一件事：工程师的本能，一旦变成一支团队共有的东西，它的力量就更大了。我这一生干事业，最大的满足感，恰恰来自把一群人拢到一起，做成一件谁都没敢想能做成的事。
说到这儿，也就说到了今天，说到了你们正站着的这个位置。过去这几十年，我们一轮接一轮地经历了几次大的技术变迁：互联网改变了我们怎么交流，移动计算改变了我们怎么生活，云计算改变了我们怎么工作——而现在，我们正站在人工智能这股大浪的开头。
在我看来，人工智能跟之前那几股浪潮，是很不一样的。我是这么想的：它不只是一件能让我们把事情做得更快的工具——工具我们多得很——它比工具要深得多。它有可能让每一个领域的发现都加速往前跑，帮我们解开那些过去从来解不开的难题。
说点私人的。最让我心动的一个领域，其实是它在医疗和健康上能做的事。我想，我们多半都亲身尝过那种滋味——你所爱的人病了。哪怕有最了不起的大夫，有最好的照料，你也会发现：要把人类一点一点积攒下来的全部知识，在那个最要紧、最危急的关头汇到一处，去救这个人，单靠某一个人、某一支团队，实在是太难太难了。
人工智能，能帮我们把这件事改过来。它能帮医生和研究者，把全世界最顶尖的本事，送到每一位病人、每一个我们所爱的人身边，给他们最对的那份照料，让他们有最大的指望好起来。这，在我看来，就是人工智能最了不起的那一面承诺。
那么该怎么看这件事呢？说到底，它让我们每一个人，都变得更有能耐了。不管你说的是医学、是科学，还是能源、气候，我想都可以这么讲：未来十年我们能发现的东西，也许比过去三十年加起来还要多。但有一点我得把话说清楚：决定未来长什么样的，从来不是技术本身，而是最好的那一批人。
人工智能能干的事再多，有几件事它干不了：哪些问题才值得去解，它定不了；数据不全的时候，那些艰难的判断，它下不了；事情最后的结果，它担不起责任。这几样，说到底是我们自己的责任。而眼下这个时候，这份责任，比以往任何时候都更重。
正因为如此，我才觉得，在这样一个当口从麻省理工毕业，是何其难得。因为这个世界要的，不只是会用强大工具的人，它要的是知道这些工具该用来干什么的人——是心里有目标、有判断、有胆量的人，是那种盯着一道难题，敢说一句“我知道这事真的真的很重要，而且我们能把它解出来”的人。而你们，恰恰就是在麻省理工，长成了这样的人。
那么，临了我想留给你们几句话。我这个人，在很多方面都很有福气：我有一对好父母，受过一份了不起的教育，又有机会跟一群了不起的人共事。但我也始终相信，我这一路职业生涯，运气是真不错。每当有人来问我职业上的建议，我常常这么跟他们说：是的，你得拼命下功夫，可你也得明白——运气，是要紧的。
日子久了我慢慢悟出来：最厉害的那些人，是自己给自己挣运气的。所谓运气，不光是“恰好在对的时间站在对的地方”那么简单。它是你肯冒着风险，去做一件真正难的事；是你敢于跟自己较劲；是你专挑那些自己都未必知道答案的问题去做；是你把一群能让你变得更好的人，聚在自己身边。是的，它还是这样一种相信——相信你们，2026届的毕业生，真的能改变这个世界。
所以，在你们选择要去解决什么问题这件事上，尽管把胃口放大些；迎着最难的那些问题冲上去；信得过麻省理工教给你们的那样东西——工程师的本能。运气，就是这么给自己挣出来的。
我想停一下，谢一谢今天坐在台下的所有家人和亲友。这些毕业生，没有你们，谁也走不到今天。谢谢你们，谢谢你们一直相信他们、撑着他们，把他们一路送到了这一刻。这份成就，也有你们的一份。
最后，2026届的同学们，记住一件事：在往后的岁月里，你总会有那么一天，走进某个房间，面对一摊事，心里完全没底，根本不知道自己该干什么。可这样的局面，你早就经历过了。去吧，把它琢磨明白。作为一个麻省理工人，对你们这另一群麻省理工人，我要说——今天能和你们站在一起，是我莫大的荣幸。祝贺你们，2026届的毕业生。
演讲全文（英文）
All right, good afternoon everyone, President Cornbluth, Chairman Gorenberg, trustees, faculty, family, friends, and most importantly the MIT class of 2026, congratulations, you've earned this, and I can tell you that standing here feels very different than I expected. I've given a lot of talks over the years, but this one is quite personal, and as you can imagine with Murphy's law, I somehow managed to lose my voice this week, so please bear with me if I sound a little rough, but I couldn't be happier to be here with you.
And if I give you a little bit of my story, I came to MIT in the fall of 1986; my parents dropped me off at Next House. I was 17 years old, born in Taiwan, raised in Queens, and I was pretty sure I was good at math. Then of course I walked into 6.01 and 6.02, and within about two weeks I realized that there were a lot of people at MIT who were very, very good at math, and I remember staring at those first problem sets thinking, my goodness, these are super hard.
And I'd never really pulled an all-nighter until freshman year; it was a new experience but it was a lot of fun doing it together with your classmates.
Now MIT has this incredible way of pushing you further than you thought you could go. You wrestled with the problem, you blew up a circuit or two (yes, some of you may have), and then somehow the thing worked, and suddenly you realized that you could build something real, and that's when I started feeling like an engineer.
One of the best parts of MIT is actually Urop , the opportunity as an undergraduate to work on real research, and that actually truly changed my life. My first Urop was in Professor Hank Smith's lab in building 39, which Anantha tells me we are decommissioning and moving, making X-ray lithography mass blanks for a grad student.
To be absolutely clear, at the time I had no idea what that actually meant, but I got to put on my first bunny suit and walk into a clean room and start building devices on little 2-in wafers, which at the time was pretty state-of-the-art.
And I learned very quickly to be careful because those wafers were actually really delicate, and I definitely didn't want to be the one who broke them. But I ran a bunch of experiments, most of them didn't work the way we expected, and so we adjusted and we tried again, and it was the coolest thing ever.
For the first time I wasn't just learning about technology in a classroom, I was part of a team trying to discover something new. And I remember thinking, "Wow, we can build things this small, things tiny enough to fit on a die the size of a coin but powerful enough to change the world," and that's when I fell in love with semiconductors.
Later I had the privilege of working with Professor Dmitri Antonis, who became my PhD adviser, and that was where I really learned how to solve problems. I remember spending weeks in the clean room fabricating devices and then bringing my wafers up to the test lab only to discover they didn't behave the way I expected at all, and so I'd go back to Demetri's office and we'd figure out what we should do next.
And looking back, that was probably where I grew the most at MIT, because little by little I went from a new grad student learning about the field to someone doing original research and actually contributing something new to the field.
And along the way I started believing in myself, not the confidence that I would always know the answer, butthe confidence that even when I didn't know the answer I could figure it out.
What I realize now is MIT was teaching me something much bigger than semiconductor device physics; mens et manus, mind in hand. When I was a student I thought it was just a motto, now I think it captures exactly what makes MIT so special.
MIT teaches you tothink deeply, but it also teaches you to build, to test ideas, to keep going when the first experiment or even the fifth experiment doesn't work, and over time you start believing that you can solve problems that once felt impossible. I carried that feeling with me long after I left campus.
When I joined IBM I found myself starting all over again. IBM had hundreds of thousands of employees; I was 25 years old wondering how I could possibly make a difference in a company that big, but I learned something important very quickly: engineering actually doesn't care how old you are, it actually cares whether you have good ideas.
And one of my mentors told me something that I've never forgotten: run towards the hardest problems. At the time I'm not sure I really knew what that meant, but I now realize this was the best advice I've ever received:hard problems really teach you what you're capable of.
So fast forward a bit, 12 years ago I got a chance to put that lesson to the test; I had the opportunity to become CEO of AMD. AMD had a lot of potential, but the company had been through a few tough years, and some of my mentors thought taking that job was actually kind of risky. But for me this was my dream job; this is what I'd been training for all those years: the opportunity to work at the bleeding edge of technology on problems that really mattered.
And the first thing we had to do was figure out what we wanted to be when we grew up; this is a big company that had to figure this out. We made a long-term bet that high performance computing would be the most important technology of the future, and we gave our talented team the room to think big.
And over the next several years we built technology to enable the most powerful computers in the world, and I can tell you through all of it I used every skill that MIT ever taught me and then some. I was trying to put it in words and I decided that calling it the engineer's instinct was kind of the right thing.
It'sthe ability to face what seemed like an unsolvable problem, break it down, and methodically work through it step by step. But I also learned something else: the engineer's instinct is even more powerful when it becomes shared by a team, and the greatest satisfaction of my career has been bringing people together to do something more than any of us thought was possible.
And that brings me to today and where you guys are. Over the last few decades we've experienced several major technology shifts: the internet changed how we communicate, mobile computing changed how we live, cloud computing changed how we work, and now we're at the beginning of the AI wave.
And to me, AI is really different from all those other waves. The way I think about it is, it's not just a tool that can help us do things faster because we have lots of tools, it's actually deeper than that. It has the potential to accelerate discovery in every field and help us solve problems that we've never been able to solve before.
And to make it personal, the area that excites me the most is actually what we can do in medicine and healthcare. I think we've all experienced firsthand what it feels like when someone you love is sick, and even with incredible doctors and the best care you realize how hard it is for any one person or any one team to bring together all of the knowledge that has been gathered to help in that critical time of need.
AI can help us change that. It can help doctors and researchers bring the world's best expertise to each patient and each loved one, and deliver the care that we want for the best chance of a successful outcome, and this I think is the promise of AI at its best.
Now the way to think about it is, it makes each of us more capable. Whether you're talking about medicine, science, energy, climate, I think you can say we may discover more in the next 10 years than we have in the last 30. But let me be clear about something:technology itself does not decide what the future looks like; the best people do.
For everything that AI can do, AI can't decide which problems are worth solving, it can't make the hard judgments when the data is not there, it can't take responsibility for the outcomes. These are actually our responsibilities, and they matter now more than ever.
This is why I feel this is such an extraordinary moment to graduate from MIT, because the world does not just need people who know how to use powerful tools, it needs people who know what to use them for: people with a sense of purpose, judgment, courage, people who look at a hard problem and say "I know this is really really important and we can figure this out.". And that is exactly who you have become here at MIT.
So here's what I want to leave you with. I've been very fortunate in many ways; I have great parents, I received an extraordinary education, I've had the chance to work with great people, but I also believe I've been very lucky in my career. When people ask me for career advice I often tell them yes, you need towork really hard, but also understand that luck matters.
And over time I've come to believe that the best peoplefind ways to make their luck. Luck is not just being in the right place at the right time; it is taking the risk to work on something really hard, it's challenging yourself, it's choosing problems where you may not know the answer, it's surrounding yourself with people who make you better, and yes, it's believing that you, the class of 2026, can change the world.
So be incredibly ambitious about what problems you choose to solve, run toward the hardest ones, and trust what MIT has taught you: that engineer's instinct. That's how you make your own luck.
I want to take a moment to acknowledge all the families and loved ones who are here in the audience today. None of these graduates got here without you; thank you for believing them, supporting them, and helping them reach this moment. This achievement belongs to you too.
And to the class of 2026, remember somewhere in the years ahead you're going to walk into another room where you have absolutely no idea what you're doing. You've done this before; go figure it out. And as one MITER to another, I am incredibly honored to be here with you today. Congratulations class of 2026.
出品 | 管理智慧
编者按
这是一篇毕业致辞，却不大像我们常见的那种致辞。
我们见惯了讲台上的高谈阔论——谈使命，谈愿景，谈战略，谈价值观，听上去字字千钧，落到地上却轻飘飘的，抓不住，也用不上。苏姿丰偏不这么讲。她站在麻省理工的讲台上，讲的全是实实在在的事：怎么把一道看上去无解的难题拆开来，一步一步啃下去；怎么烧坏过几个电路，又把那东西重新做对；怎么在压根不知道答案的时候，仍旧有把握把它琢磨出来。这套本事，她给起了个名字，叫"工程师的本能"。
当年斯隆也是地道的理工男，也是懂得向流程要效率、向难题要出路。后来的福特、格鲁夫、韦尔奇、任正非，无一不是如此。可惜直到今天，还有不少做企业的人不明白这个理儿，整天热衷于搞人际关系，热衷于文史哲，把本来简单的事情越说越玄，到末了，活像那只被青蛙问住的蜈蚣，连路都不会走了。
我们把这篇演讲译成中文，不为别的，只想请做企业、带队伍的朋友看一看：技术的浪头一波接一波，可决定未来长什么样的，从来不是技术本身，而是人——是那些肯下功夫、敢担责任、能自己给自己挣运气的人。这一点，斯隆懂，苏姿丰也懂。
演讲全文（中文）
大家下午好！康布鲁斯校长，戈伦伯格主席，各位理事，各位老师，各位家长和朋友，还有最要紧的——麻省理工学院2026届的毕业生们，祝贺你们！这是你们自己挣来的。
说句实话，站在这里的感觉，和我事先想的很不一样。这些年我演讲过不知多少回，可这一回不同，这一回很私人。偏偏又赶上墨菲定律——这一周我把嗓子给弄哑了，所以要是听着有点儿费劲，请大家多担待。但能站在你们中间，我心里头是真高兴。
我先讲讲自己的事。1986年秋天，我来到麻省理工，父母把我送到Next House宿舍楼就走了。那年我17岁，出生在台湾，在纽约皇后区长大，自认为数学还算不错。然后呢，我走进了6.01和6.02这两门课的课堂。也就两个星期，我就明白了一件事：在麻省理工，数学很好很好的人，一抓一大把。我到现在还记得，盯着头几份习题集发愣，心里直犯嘀咕——天哪，这也太难了。
在那之前，我几乎没有通宵熬过夜。大一头一回通宵，是个新鲜体验，可一帮同学凑在一块儿熬，居然熬得挺开心。
麻省理工有一种了不起的本事，它能把你往前推，推到你自己都没想到的地方。你跟一道题死磕，烧坏一两个电路（没错，你们当中有些人估计也干过），然后不知怎么的，那东西竟然运转起来了。就在那一刻你忽然明白，原来自己真能造出一个实实在在的东西来。也是从那时候起，我开始觉得自己像个工程师了。
麻省理工最好的东西之一，其实是UROP——本科生研究机会计划，它让你在本科阶段就能上手真刀真枪的科研。这件事，实实在在改变了我这一生。我的第一个UROP，是在39号楼汉克·史密斯教授的实验室。阿南萨告诉我，那栋楼如今要拆了、要搬了。当时我替一位研究生做X射线光刻用的掩膜基板。
我得老实说，那会儿我压根不知道这到底是在干什么。可我头一回穿上了防尘服，走进无尘室，在小小的2英寸晶圆上做起器件来——这在当时，已经算是最顶尖的活儿了。
我很快就学会了小心翼翼，因为那些晶圆实在太娇气，我可不想当那个把它弄坏的人。我做了一大堆实验，多数都不像我们预想的那样成功，那就调一调，再试一回。可对我来说，这是天底下最带劲的事儿。
这是头一回，我不再只是坐在教室里学技术，而是成了一支队伍里的一员，跟大家一道去探一个未知的东西。我还记得当时心里想：哎呀，我们竟然能造出这么小的东西——小到能装进一块硬币大小的芯片里，可它的能耐，却足以改变整个世界。也就是从那时起，我爱上了半导体。
再往后，我有幸跟德米特里·安东尼亚迪斯教授一起做事，他后来成了我的博士导师。也正是在他那里，我才算真正学会了怎么去解决问题。我记得，在无尘室里一连泡上好几个星期做器件，然后把晶圆端到测试实验室一测，结果跟我预想的完全是两码事。于是我又回到德米特里的办公室，我们俩一块儿琢磨，下一步该怎么走。
现在回头看，我在麻省理工长进最大的，大概就是那段日子。因为一点一点地，我从一个刚入门、还在摸门道的研究生，变成了一个能做原创研究、能给这个领域添上一点新东西的人。
也是在这个过程里，我开始相信自己了。这种相信，不是说我总能知道答案，而是说——哪怕我不知道答案，我也有把握把它琢磨出来。
如今我才想明白，麻省理工教给我的，远不止半导体器件物理这点东西。mens et manus——手与脑，说白了，就是脑子要会想，手上也要会做。当学生那会儿，我以为这不过是一句校训；现在我觉得，这句话恰恰道出了麻省理工最特别的地方。
麻省理工教你往深里想，可它同时教你动手去造，教你把想法拿去试，教你在第一次实验、甚至第五次实验都失败之后，还能接着干下去。日子久了，你就会慢慢相信，那些曾经看上去根本不可能解决的难题，自己其实是解得开的。离开校园很久很久以后，这种感觉，我一直揣在身上。
进了IBM，我发现自己又得从头来过。IBM有几十万员工，我才25岁，心里直打鼓——在这么大一家公司里，我一个人能起什么作用？可我很快就明白了一件要紧的事：搞工程这一行，根本不在乎你多大岁数，它只在乎你有没有好点子。
我的一位前辈跟我说过一句话，我一直没忘：迎着最难的问题冲上去。当时我未必真懂这话的分量，可现在我明白了，这是我这辈子听过的最好的一句忠告——难题这东西，最能让你看清自己究竟有几斤几两。
再往后跳一段。12年前，我得到一个机会，去验证这句话到底对不对——我有机会出任AMD的首席执行官。AMD这家公司底子不薄，潜力很大，可前几年日子过得很苦。我的几位前辈都觉得，接这个活儿，风险不小。可在我看来，这正是我做梦都想要的位置，是我这么多年一直在为之做准备的事情：站在技术最前沿，去啃那些真正要紧的难题。
上来要做的头一件事，就是想清楚：我们这家公司长大以后，究竟想成为一个什么样的公司。这么大一家企业，得先把这件事想明白。我们押下了一个长远的赌注——高性能计算，会是未来最要紧的一项技术。然后，我们给那支能干的团队腾出地方，让他们放开手脚去想大事。
接下来的好几年里，我们做出了一批技术，撑起了世界上最强大的那些计算机。我可以告诉大家，这一路走下来，麻省理工教给我的每一样本事，我都用上了，而且还不止于此。我一直想给它找个说法，最后我觉得，把它叫作“工程师的本能”，大概是最贴切的。
所谓工程师的本能，就是面对一个看上去无解的难题，能把它拆开来，一步一步、有条有理地啃下去。但我还悟出了另一件事：工程师的本能，一旦变成一支团队共有的东西，它的力量就更大了。我这一生干事业，最大的满足感，恰恰来自把一群人拢到一起，做成一件谁都没敢想能做成的事。
说到这儿，也就说到了今天，说到了你们正站着的这个位置。过去这几十年，我们一轮接一轮地经历了几次大的技术变迁：互联网改变了我们怎么交流，移动计算改变了我们怎么生活，云计算改变了我们怎么工作——而现在，我们正站在人工智能这股大浪的开头。
在我看来，人工智能跟之前那几股浪潮，是很不一样的。我是这么想的：它不只是一件能让我们把事情做得更快的工具——工具我们多得很——它比工具要深得多。它有可能让每一个领域的发现都加速往前跑，帮我们解开那些过去从来解不开的难题。
说点私人的。最让我心动的一个领域，其实是它在医疗和健康上能做的事。我想，我们多半都亲身尝过那种滋味——你所爱的人病了。哪怕有最了不起的大夫，有最好的照料，你也会发现：要把人类一点一点积攒下来的全部知识，在那个最要紧、最危急的关头汇到一处，去救这个人，单靠某一个人、某一支团队，实在是太难太难了。
人工智能，能帮我们把这件事改过来。它能帮医生和研究者，把全世界最顶尖的本事，送到每一位病人、每一个我们所爱的人身边，给他们最对的那份照料，让他们有最大的指望好起来。这，在我看来，就是人工智能最了不起的那一面承诺。
那么该怎么看这件事呢？说到底，它让我们每一个人，都变得更有能耐了。不管你说的是医学、是科学，还是能源、气候，我想都可以这么讲：未来十年我们能发现的东西，也许比过去三十年加起来还要多。但有一点我得把话说清楚：决定未来长什么样的，从来不是技术本身，而是最好的那一批人。
人工智能能干的事再多，有几件事它干不了：哪些问题才值得去解，它定不了；数据不全的时候，那些艰难的判断，它下不了；事情最后的结果，它担不起责任。这几样，说到底是我们自己的责任。而眼下这个时候，这份责任，比以往任何时候都更重。
正因为如此，我才觉得，在这样一个当口从麻省理工毕业，是何其难得。因为这个世界要的，不只是会用强大工具的人，它要的是知道这些工具该用来干什么的人——是心里有目标、有判断、有胆量的人，是那种盯着一道难题，敢说一句“我知道这事真的真的很重要，而且我们能把它解出来”的人。而你们，恰恰就是在麻省理工，长成了这样的人。
那么，临了我想留给你们几句话。我这个人，在很多方面都很有福气：我有一对好父母，受过一份了不起的教育，又有机会跟一群了不起的人共事。但我也始终相信，我这一路职业生涯，运气是真不错。每当有人来问我职业上的建议，我常常这么跟他们说：是的，你得拼命下功夫，可你也得明白——运气，是要紧的。
日子久了我慢慢悟出来：最厉害的那些人，是自己给自己挣运气的。所谓运气，不光是“恰好在对的时间站在对的地方”那么简单。它是你肯冒着风险，去做一件真正难的事；是你敢于跟自己较劲；是你专挑那些自己都未必知道答案的问题去做；是你把一群能让你变得更好的人，聚在自己身边。是的，它还是这样一种相信——相信你们，2026届的毕业生，真的能改变这个世界。
所以，在你们选择要去解决什么问题这件事上，尽管把胃口放大些；迎着最难的那些问题冲上去；信得过麻省理工教给你们的那样东西——工程师的本能。运气，就是这么给自己挣出来的。
我想停一下，谢一谢今天坐在台下的所有家人和亲友。这些毕业生，没有你们，谁也走不到今天。谢谢你们，谢谢你们一直相信他们、撑着他们，把他们一路送到了这一刻。这份成就，也有你们的一份。
最后，2026届的同学们，记住一件事：在往后的岁月里，你总会有那么一天，走进某个房间，面对一摊事，心里完全没底，根本不知道自己该干什么。可这样的局面，你早就经历过了。去吧，把它琢磨明白。作为一个麻省理工人，对你们这另一群麻省理工人，我要说——今天能和你们站在一起，是我莫大的荣幸。祝贺你们，2026届的毕业生。
演讲全文（英文）
All right, good afternoon everyone, President Cornbluth, Chairman Gorenberg, trustees, faculty, family, friends, and most importantly the MIT class of 2026, congratulations, you've earned this, and I can tell you that standing here feels very different than I expected. I've given a lot of talks over the years, but this one is quite personal, and as you can imagine with Murphy's law, I somehow managed to lose my voice this week, so please bear with me if I sound a little rough, but I couldn't be happier to be here with you.
And if I give you a little bit of my story, I came to MIT in the fall of 1986; my parents dropped me off at Next House. I was 17 years old, born in Taiwan, raised in Queens, and I was pretty sure I was good at math. Then of course I walked into 6.01 and 6.02, and within about two weeks I realized that there were a lot of people at MIT who were very, very good at math, and I remember staring at those first problem sets thinking, my goodness, these are super hard.
And I'd never really pulled an all-nighter until freshman year; it was a new experience but it was a lot of fun doing it together with your classmates.
Now MIT has this incredible way of pushing you further than you thought you could go. You wrestled with the problem, you blew up a circuit or two (yes, some of you may have), and then somehow the thing worked, and suddenly you realized that you could build something real, and that's when I started feeling like an engineer.
One of the best parts of MIT is actually Urop , the opportunity as an undergraduate to work on real research, and that actually truly changed my life. My first Urop was in Professor Hank Smith's lab in building 39, which Anantha tells me we are decommissioning and moving, making X-ray lithography mass blanks for a grad student.
To be absolutely clear, at the time I had no idea what that actually meant, but I got to put on my first bunny suit and walk into a clean room and start building devices on little 2-in wafers, which at the time was pretty state-of-the-art.
And I learned very quickly to be careful because those wafers were actually really delicate, and I definitely didn't want to be the one who broke them. But I ran a bunch of experiments, most of them didn't work the way we expected, and so we adjusted and we tried again, and it was the coolest thing ever.
For the first time I wasn't just learning about technology in a classroom, I was part of a team trying to discover something new. And I remember thinking, "Wow, we can build things this small, things tiny enough to fit on a die the size of a coin but powerful enough to change the world," and that's when I fell in love with semiconductors.
Later I had the privilege of working with Professor Dmitri Antonis, who became my PhD adviser, and that was where I really learned how to solve problems. I remember spending weeks in the clean room fabricating devices and then bringing my wafers up to the test lab only to discover they didn't behave the way I expected at all, and so I'd go back to Demetri's office and we'd figure out what we should do next.
And looking back, that was probably where I grew the most at MIT, because little by little I went from a new grad student learning about the field to someone doing original research and actually contributing something new to the field.
And along the way I started believing in myself, not the confidence that I would always know the answer, butthe confidence that even when I didn't know the answer I could figure it out.
What I realize now is MIT was teaching me something much bigger than semiconductor device physics; mens et manus, mind in hand. When I was a student I thought it was just a motto, now I think it captures exactly what makes MIT so special.
MIT teaches you tothink deeply, but it also teaches you to build, to test ideas, to keep going when the first experiment or even the fifth experiment doesn't work, and over time you start believing that you can solve problems that once felt impossible. I carried that feeling with me long after I left campus.
When I joined IBM I found myself starting all over again. IBM had hundreds of thousands of employees; I was 25 years old wondering how I could possibly make a difference in a company that big, but I learned something important very quickly: engineering actually doesn't care how old you are, it actually cares whether you have good ideas.
And one of my mentors told me something that I've never forgotten: run towards the hardest problems. At the time I'm not sure I really knew what that meant, but I now realize this was the best advice I've ever received:hard problems really teach you what you're capable of.
So fast forward a bit, 12 years ago I got a chance to put that lesson to the test; I had the opportunity to become CEO of AMD. AMD had a lot of potential, but the company had been through a few tough years, and some of my mentors thought taking that job was actually kind of risky. But for me this was my dream job; this is what I'd been training for all those years: the opportunity to work at the bleeding edge of technology on problems that really mattered.
And the first thing we had to do was figure out what we wanted to be when we grew up; this is a big company that had to figure this out. We made a long-term bet that high performance computing would be the most important technology of the future, and we gave our talented team the room to think big.
And over the next several years we built technology to enable the most powerful computers in the world, and I can tell you through all of it I used every skill that MIT ever taught me and then some. I was trying to put it in words and I decided that calling it the engineer's instinct was kind of the right thing.
It'sthe ability to face what seemed like an unsolvable problem, break it down, and methodically work through it step by step. But I also learned something else: the engineer's instinct is even more powerful when it becomes shared by a team, and the greatest satisfaction of my career has been bringing people together to do something more than any of us thought was possible.
And that brings me to today and where you guys are. Over the last few decades we've experienced several major technology shifts: the internet changed how we communicate, mobile computing changed how we live, cloud computing changed how we work, and now we're at the beginning of the AI wave.
And to me, AI is really different from all those other waves. The way I think about it is, it's not just a tool that can help us do things faster because we have lots of tools, it's actually deeper than that. It has the potential to accelerate discovery in every field and help us solve problems that we've never been able to solve before.
And to make it personal, the area that excites me the most is actually what we can do in medicine and healthcare. I think we've all experienced firsthand what it feels like when someone you love is sick, and even with incredible doctors and the best care you realize how hard it is for any one person or any one team to bring together all of the knowledge that has been gathered to help in that critical time of need.
AI can help us change that. It can help doctors and researchers bring the world's best expertise to each patient and each loved one, and deliver the care that we want for the best chance of a successful outcome, and this I think is the promise of AI at its best.
Now the way to think about it is, it makes each of us more capable. Whether you're talking about medicine, science, energy, climate, I think you can say we may discover more in the next 10 years than we have in the last 30. But let me be clear about something:technology itself does not decide what the future looks like; the best people do.
For everything that AI can do, AI can't decide which problems are worth solving, it can't make the hard judgments when the data is not there, it can't take responsibility for the outcomes. These are actually our responsibilities, and they matter now more than ever.
This is why I feel this is such an extraordinary moment to graduate from MIT, because the world does not just need people who know how to use powerful tools, it needs people who know what to use them for: people with a sense of purpose, judgment, courage, people who look at a hard problem and say "I know this is really really important and we can figure this out.". And that is exactly who you have become here at MIT.
So here's what I want to leave you with. I've been very fortunate in many ways; I have great parents, I received an extraordinary education, I've had the chance to work with great people, but I also believe I've been very lucky in my career. When people ask me for career advice I often tell them yes, you need towork really hard, but also understand that luck matters.
And over time I've come to believe that the best peoplefind ways to make their luck. Luck is not just being in the right place at the right time; it is taking the risk to work on something really hard, it's challenging yourself, it's choosing problems where you may not know the answer, it's surrounding yourself with people who make you better, and yes, it's believing that you, the class of 2026, can change the world.
So be incredibly ambitious about what problems you choose to solve, run toward the hardest ones, and trust what MIT has taught you: that engineer's instinct. That's how you make your own luck.
I want to take a moment to acknowledge all the families and loved ones who are here in the audience today. None of these graduates got here without you; thank you for believing them, supporting them, and helping them reach this moment. This achievement belongs to you too.
And to the class of 2026, remember somewhere in the years ahead you're going to walk into another room where you have absolutely no idea what you're doing. You've done this before; go figure it out. And as one MITER to another, I am incredibly honored to be here with you today. Congratulations class of 2026.
