Soft-hard takeoff

a scenario i've been wondering about recently is where there is a stereotypical "soft takeoff" until around the point where the AI has somewhat-infra-human level general intelligence, and then once it crosses some threshold, a stereotypical "hard takeoff" happens.

the only places where i've found any discussion of this:

eric drexler says: """What I find extremely implausible are scenarios in which humanity confronts high-level AI without the prior emergence of potentially-strategically-decisive AI — that is, AI capabilities that are potentially decisive when employed by some group of ingenious, well-resourced human actors.

If we see something like “fast takeoff”, it is likely to occur in a world that is already far up the slope of a slow takeoff trajectory; if so, then many (though not all) of the key strategic considerations resemble those you’ve discussed in the context of slow-takeoff models.

The continued popularity of scenarios that posit fast takeoff with weak precursors is, I think, the result of a failure to update on the actual trajectory of AI development, or a failure of imagination in considering how intermediate levels of AI technology could be exploited."""

In this gist, buck asks "It seems like there might be various ways that the world could be radically transformed by narrow AI before it's transformed by AGI; why don't people talk about that? (Maybe CAIS is people talking about this?)"