Is the Industrial Revolution a good precedent for explosive growth today?

The article argues that using the Industrial Revolution as precedent for explosive AI-driven growth today is misleading because the contexts differ fundamentally. While the Industrial Revolution saw growth accelerate roughly 15-fold from a low baseline (making 10× faster years relatively common), achieving similar multiples today would represent an unprecedented deviation from modern economic norms rather than a return to historical patterns. The author contends that an Industrial Revolution-style acceleration in contemporary frontier economies would realistically yield around 2.8% annual growth—meaningfully faster than today but far below the often-claimed 20%+ growth rates from AI.