In some sense that doesn't even really matter. We're already at an inflexion point now where the effort to reward ratio of certain activities that used to be possible, but difficult has tipped into possible and not difficult. Once you reach that point, further progress is kind of irrelevant. The confetti has left the cannon. We're not going to go back to a world where it was as difficult as it used to be, so even if no further progress were to be made, we are still going to learn in due course what the implications of the current level of progress are.

Sam Harris has a straightforward, yet somewhat compelling argument re: your actual question here, and that is "if it's at all possible for us to improve our technology, then we are going to" and iirc he notes that it doesn't necessarily matter how fast that happens, just the fact that it's possible means we're likely to do it.