今年是路易斯·馮·安在地球上度過的第41個年頭，這個世界也因為他有過三次改變，然而他仍然因為其第一次對世界的改變而飽受批評。

這個發(fā)明于2000年在雅虎首次面世，有著各種各樣的名字。這位危地馬拉出生的計算機科學(xué)家將其稱為“完全自動化的公共圖靈測試，旨在將計算機與人類區(qū)分開來”，或簡稱“驗證碼”（Captcha）?；蛟S你還記得，驗證碼這個小方框通常讓人們感到十分惱火，里面是一些拉伸、扭曲的字母，人們必須正確識別并重新輸入之后才能夠獲得某些網(wǎng)站的訪問權(quán)限。路易斯·馮·安稱，正是因為這一發(fā)明，一些陌生人在多個場合對他抱怨說：“哦，天哪，我恨你?！?/p>

盡管驗證碼可能引發(fā)了短暫的焦慮，但它們長期以來在防范反社會人士（直到最近，其光學(xué)閱讀器對此類變形字體的識別率才有所好轉(zhuǎn)）方面發(fā)揮了有效作用，這些人會使用計算機迅速買光Ticketmaster網(wǎng)站上的門票，注冊數(shù)百萬個郵箱賬號以及從事一系列其他制造網(wǎng)絡(luò)垃圾和行騙事件。

不幸的是，驗證碼也耗費了無數(shù)的運行時間（盡管每一次只有10秒的間隔），因為使用者得費力地去辨識這些字體。因此路易斯·馮·安想，人們在這10秒內(nèi)是否可以做些更有意義的事情呢？答案是ReCaptcha，它對驗證碼測試進行了巧妙的調(diào)整，這樣，網(wǎng)頁瀏覽者實際上在解讀古抄本難認詞匯的同時證明了自己并非是機器人。借助ReCaptcha，路易斯·馮·安采用眾包的方法來解讀那些遺失的文獻，每一天的解讀量達到了3500萬個詞。谷歌于2009年收購了ReCaptcha。路易斯·馮·安如今是卡內(nèi)基梅隆大學(xué)的顧問教授，曾經(jīng)獲得麥克阿瑟“天才”獎獎金。

這又把我們帶到他在2011年的第三個發(fā)明，路易斯·馮·安和他在卡內(nèi)基梅隆大學(xué)的研究生學(xué)生瑟維林·?？舜蛟炝薉uolingo公司，該公司在《財富》雜志“改變世界的公司”2019年榜單上位列第36名。這個免費的語言學(xué)習(xí)應(yīng)用程序是一個靠廣告支持的項目（也有付費版本）目前已經(jīng)有2800萬活躍用戶，它再次巧妙地讓人們能夠利用閑暇時光做一些有價值的事情：獲得講一門外語的能力。在這一過程中，他們也在幫助挽救少數(shù)瀕臨滅絕的語言。在Duolingo教授的36種語言中，有三種（夏威夷語、納瓦霍語和愛爾蘭語）都面臨著成為歷史的危險。例如在愛爾蘭，每天講愛爾蘭語（蓋爾語）的人口不到7.5萬；如今，440萬嶄露頭角的多國語言學(xué)習(xí)者正通過該應(yīng)用程序在Duolingo上學(xué)習(xí)labhair（愛爾蘭語：交談）。當新人意識到其開發(fā)者是路易斯·馮·安時，他們對他說：“哦，天哪，我愛你?！?/p>

幸運的是，路易斯·馮·安和他的團隊將有能力繼續(xù)收獲這份厚愛：Duolingo今年的營收預(yù)測為8600萬美元，是2018年3600萬美元的兩倍多，而且他預(yù)計銷售額在明年將翻番。反過來，這一增幅也讓這位多產(chǎn)的發(fā)明家有財力尋找更好的方式來幫助學(xué)習(xí)語言，并為他的下一個項目提供資助：教授人們?nèi)绾伍喿x。

我們的第五年度“改變世界的公司”榜單（是《財富》雜志眾多基準榜單中我最喜歡的一個榜單）將展示大量致力于尋找可持續(xù)發(fā)展（通常也是盈利的）方式來解決社會挑戰(zhàn)的企業(yè)。與以往一樣，我們并沒有按照“好”或“壞”的標準來衡量這些公司，我們也不會這樣做，而且我們并不是在說，我們所凸顯的項目能夠抵消這些公司可能正在開展的不利于社會的事情。（財富中文網(wǎng)）

本文另一版本登載于《財富》雜志2019年9月刊，標題為《轉(zhuǎn)化成功》。

譯者：Feb

In his 41 years on earth so far, Luis von Ahn has changed the world three times. People still blame him for the first.

That invention, which had its public debut on Yahoo in 2000, had a mouthful of a name; the Guatemalan-born computer scientist called it a “completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart,” or “Captcha” for short. Captchas, you’ll recall, are those often--agonizing boxes of stretched and twisted letters that mortals must correctly identify and retype to gain access to certain websites. That invention, says von Ahn, has on multiple occasions provoked strangers to tell him, “Oh, my God, I hate you.”

For all the fleeting angst they may have caused, though, Captchas have long been effective in preventing antisocial types from using computers—whose optical readers, until recently, had trouble reading such misshapen type—to rapidly buy up tickets on Ticketmaster, sign up for millions of email accounts, and do a host of other spammy and scammy things.

Captchas also unfortunately have consumed countless hours of exertion (albeit in 10-second intervals) as users strain to decipher the characters. So von Ahn, now a consulting professor at Carnegie Mellon and winner of a MacArthur “genius” grant, wondered, What better thing could people do with that same 10 seconds of effort? The answer was ReCaptcha—which ingeniously tweaked the Captcha test so that web surfers actually deciphered the hard-to-read text of ancient manuscripts as they proved they weren’t bots. With ReCaptcha, which Google bought in 2009, von Ahn crowdsourced the decoding of lost literature—by 35 million words a day.

Which brings us to invention No. 3. In 2011, von Ahn and one of his former graduate students at Carnegie Mellon, Severin Hacker, created Duolingo, No. 36 on Fortune’s 2019 Change the World list. Their language-learning app, whose free, ad-supported programs (and a paid option) are actively used by 28 million people, has once again mastered the art of converting human downtime into something valuable: the ability to speak a foreign tongue. In the process, they are helping save a few from extinction too. Among the 36 languages that Duolingo teaches, three—Hawaiian, Navajo, and Irish—were once in danger of fading into history. In Ireland, for instance, fewer than 75,000 people speak Irish, or Gaeilge, daily; today, 4.4 million budding linguists are learning to labhair on Duolingo. When new acquaintances learn that von Ahn built it, they tell him, “Oh, my God, I love you.”

Happily, von Ahn and his team can afford to keep being loved: Duo?lingo’s projected revenues for this year are $86 million—more than double 2018’s take of $36 million—and he expects sales to roughly double again next year. The growth, in turn, has allowed the serial inventor to invest in finding even better ways to help people learn languages—and to fund his next project: teaching people how to read.

Our fifth annual Change the World package—my favorite of Fortune’s many benchmark lists—offers a rich supply of companies that are finding sustainable (and often profitable) ways to address societal challenges. As always, we’re not weighing companies on a scale of “good” or “bad”—we couldn’t if we tried. Nor are we suggesting that the projects we’re highlighting absolve companies of things they may be doing that aren’t beneficial for society.

A version of this article appears in the September 2019 issue of Fortune with the headline “Translating Success.”