It would be interesting to see. I don't think the level of advancement on the part of the Aliens would need to be so far beyond our level, if it was then what would the interest be in us other than for scientific study. Example would be Humans Studying the Great Apes of the world.
So I think any Alien interest is going to be from those that are only a little bit beyond our level. The ability to travel space in a timely manner may just be around the corner for us. It may have taken a long time to go from domesticating the horse, but once that was done, did it take that long to go from a riding a horse to a horse pulling a cart, then to a steam engine train transportation, to petroleum based automobiles to the current battery powered cars.
Cultural adaption kind of runs both ways, at least for human societies. If it ran the same for Alien Societies then our entry into space would be accelerated whether the Alien majority wanted it that way or not. I am sure there would be some aliens that would go native, just as there were European Explorers that went native.
Some people just have a need to share, I would like to think that an Alien culture would also have that need to share. So if the aliens are benevolent some would share knowledge, I really do not think though that any Alien race that is far beyond where we are in development would be any more interested in elevating us any more than we are interested in elevating the great apes.
Yeah, even tech advanced at an exponential rate. So, the next 100 years should be REALLY exciting for humanity. Proper space travel may become a reality sooner than people think.
If the alien race were to be even 1000 years ahead of us, it would be a major difference between the state of their technology and ours. So, we could skip a lot of steps in the evolution of our tech! That would be wonderful. As you said, I hope that aliens are benevolent and would be willing to share their tech.