Most progress is NOT an exponential increase. There have been past periods of remarkably rapid change, and they've always tended to peter out after a while - leading to lengthy periods of stagnation or regression at worst and slow increase at best.

As Egan has pointed out, exponential increase is a curse - it either hits up against unsurmountable obstacles and ceases or depletes its own resource base and destroys itself. We do not find bacteria suddenly mutating into grey goo and consuming the Earth, nor do we find cockroaches dominating all other forms of life. Even ecologically invasive organisms fall back into sustainable patterns sooner or later, or they go extinct.

Sudden, world-altering transitions are possible, but they're extremely rare. Given that so many artificial intelligence advocates have been extremely optimistic about future progress, and past predictions have been so consistently overstepping what actually happened, that we should be extremely skeptical about foreseeing a sudden jump.