There is a fear in your generation that the future has already been written, that the machines are coming, that the jobs are evaporating, that the climate is breaking, that politics are fractured, and that you are inheriting a mess that you did not create.

This is true, it's not just AI. The world is kinda screwed right now. It feels like it's much more so than in the 80s when nuclear war was looming and we were poorer.

Schmidt is saying the above statement so that he can then break it down and weaken it but he is one of the major causes of the world's problems right now. Even the broken politics is caused by social media.

He acknowledged that their fears were “rational” and encouraged them to adapt and to shape how AI will be used in the future – rather than for that to shape them.

I do think AI will displace jobs and I doubt most of them will actually be replaced with different jobs. There's just going to be too much displacement too quickly. And that will make people very angry. Rightly so. Companies don't really exist to make rich people even more money. They exist to enable our lives and society. If they no longer do there's no more reason for them to exist.