Boom CEO Blake Scholl: AI Should Accelerate, Not Decelerate
Blake Scholl, founder and CEO of Boom Supersonic, publicly stated that artificial intelligence is the greatest technology since the steam engine.
He firmly advocates that the approach to AI should be to accelerate its development rather than slow it down, directly responding to the current debate in the tech community about whether to "hit the brakes" on AI development.
Scholl compares AI to the steam engine, which was the core driving technology of the Industrial Revolution, implying that he believes AI has a revolutionary status capable of reshaping the entire economy and production methods.
This statement did not include specific data, products, or policy details; it is purely a declaration of position, reflecting his personal attitude towards the development path of AI rather than specific business actions at the company level.
Mechanically, this is a purely statement-driven event, not directly pointing to specific transactions or capital flows; however, as the founder of a company that heavily relies on cutting-edge engineering simulation and AI-assisted design technology to develop supersonic passenger aircraft, Scholl's public support for "accelerating AI" also objectively seeks a more lenient public opinion and policy environment for companies, including his own, that deeply apply AI in engineering research and development processes.
Source: Public information
ABAB AI Insight
Blake Scholl founded Boom Supersonic in 2014 with the goal of restarting supersonic commercial passenger flights that have been interrupted since the Concorde was retired; the company's scale model technology demonstrator XB-1 is set to complete its test flight and break the sound barrier in early 2025, becoming the first civil aircraft to achieve supersonic flight since the Concorde's retirement. Scholl has consistently presented himself as someone who "dares to challenge the industry consensus viewed as outdated or overly cautious" during this process.
Boom Supersonic has previously secured letters of intent for its supersonic aircraft Overture from airlines such as American Airlines and United Airlines, and has received funding and collaborative support from venture capital and the U.S. Air Force. Scholl's public advocacy for "accelerating AI" resonates with the company's actual need for heavy reliance on AI-assisted computing in high-investment R&D areas such as aerodynamic design and material simulation—the iteration speed of AI technology directly relates to whether the development cycle of its supersonic aircraft can be shortened and engineering costs can be reduced.
This path of "technological optimism + personally disrupting traditional industries" is similar to Elon Musk's strategy of redefining space launch costs through SpaceX and redefining the electric vehicle industry through Tesla—both choose to re-invest in areas considered "proven to be unprofitable or too dangerous" and publicly advocate for related cutting-edge technologies to be pushed more aggressively rather than being cautiously restricted. The current tech industry is in a phase of open confrontation between the "AI acceleration faction" and the "AI cautious faction," competing for public opinion and policy discourse power.
Essentially, this is a station team under the logic of technological substitution: positioning AI as a general technology comparable to the steam engine means that whoever can apply AI to their core R&D and production processes faster and more fully is more likely to gain an efficiency advantage in the next round of industrial competition. The mechanism at play is that general technology revolutions have historically been accompanied by the rule that "early adopters gain nonlinear efficiency dividends," so a group of tech entrepreneurs, including Scholl, instinctively stand on the side of the "acceleration camp"—slowing down AI development equates to giving up the first-mover efficiency advantage they are accumulating.
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