He detailed this argument in his book called “The Rise and Fall of American Growth” stating that it is tough to discover new inventions though we can build some self-improving AI’s which can help dig deeper in order to find out new technologies and exciting inventions which can help us grow at a very quick rate.  

The two reasons why Gordon’s statement is overrated are, that it’s not how well the technology satisfies our needs. People always are interested in how technology can bring a change in their lives but that isn’t the same as growth. Growth is quite different and can’t be compared with the satisfaction.  

A good example to explain this is that buying your first motorbike is a lot more life-changing than buying your 10th motorbike, even though both add the same amount to gross domestic product. The same goes for the technological inventions. The inventions that can help us to climb the steps to security and prosperity will be more vital than what comes from them at a later stage.

The second reason why we tend to believe Gordon more is because technology isn’t the only weapon that can be used for the betterment of your society. The government also play an equally important role here as a good government provide efficient public services, provide public goods like infrastructure and research funding and minimises the harmful effects of regulation.

It’s a good argument that big government and, more importantly, good government was responsible for a significant amount of the growth in developed nations between 1870 and 1970. Gordon considers this as a great step towards invention as the health & safety regulations were improved and even the public education greatly increased the skills of the labour.

That sort of change was most likely a unique case. Not at all like science and innovation, government presumably has a maximum cutoff of viability. You can just move from being North Korea to South Korea once. That implies that a portion of the profitability stoppage we have watched might be because of our accomplishment in enhancing how we administer ourselves.