Tony Robbins on Overcoming Job Loss, Purposelessness & The Coming AI Disruption | 222

Tony Robbins (0:00)

People ask me all the time, how do you provide certainty for people when the external world no longer offers certainty? There is no external certainty. So when those jobs are disrupted, what will people hang on to? The answer is...

SPEAKER_2 (0:10)

One of the most famous people on the planet, Tony Robbins.

Salim Ismail (0:13)

The great Tony Robbins is here, my man.

Tony Robbins (0:15)

There's nothing that people want that they can't make happen, if they really want it with heart and soul, if they want to do something about it.

Peter Diamandis (0:21)

This kind of change hitting society isn't just a threat about unemployment, it's a threat about a nervous system shock.

Tony Robbins (0:30)

AI is the call. New technology is the call for us to become more. Again, to move from survival to spirit, to move from settling to something greater.

Salim Ismail (0:39)

AI is going to create this rate of change that is just beyond belief, and it doesn't correlate with happiness necessarily, it needs to be turned into happiness.

Salim Ismail (0:48)

Tony, you've been coaching millions of people over decades, right? After kind of looking back over that time, are you more optimistic about the world or less?

Tony Robbins (0:56)

Here's what I think about optimism, I think.

Peter Diamandis (1:01)

Now, that's the Moonshot, ladies and gentlemen.

Everybody, welcome to Moonshots. I'm here today with a dear friend, the world's number one life and business coach, Tony Robbins. He's coached more than 100 million people across 195 countries. Beyond his coaching, he's the owner of, in more than 114 companies with $12 billion in business. He is an investor in private equity across 80 private equity companies with $11 billion AUM. He's advised presidents, Fortune 500 CEOs, global leaders on leadership and human potential. Personally, Tony is one of my best friends. We've co-authored a number one New York Times selling book. We've co-founded two companies, Fountain Life and Life Force. And in my opinion, he is one of the greatest humanitarians on the planet alive today. Tony, welcome pal.

Tony Robbins (1:53)

Thanks, buddy. It's great to be with you.

Peter Diamandis (1:55)

Yeah, for sure. You know, I remember a decade ago, we started a conversation and we started too early, but a conversation about what we saw as the age of coming technological socialism, where technology, not the government, but technology would start to take care of individuals. And the implications that that might have on our psychology, on our sense of safety, on how we motivate ourselves. And as you know, I did a podcast recently with with Elon. And in during that conversation, he said a few things that I wanted, my first person wanted to speak to about this was you. You know, he said literally that he expects in the next three to five years, that AI and robotics would fundamentally displace all human labor. And I think the time frame that folks have been talking about in the media, in government, across the board, has been more of a 20 year adaptation cycle of how long that would take. And humans are amazingly adaptable. But I don't think at that speed. I think, you know, this kind of change hitting society isn't just a threat about unemployment.

It's a threat about a nervous system shock. Yeah. So, let's start there. How do you, you know, how do you respond to that? What are your concerns?

Tony Robbins (3:22)

Well, when the environment changes faster than our ability to adapt, people panic. When people panic, they have a variety of emotional reactions, including anger and rage and sometimes violence. And if you look at the history of change, you can go back all the way to Luddites, you know, if you remember studying your history in the 1800s in England, and they created these machines that displaced about 70% of the jobs. And what do people do?

They rioted. You know, you had thousands of people, you had them attacking with hammers to destroy these machines. You had them blowing up facilities, you know, factories. You had factory people, owners being shot and being threatened to be killed. You had factory owners putting people out there, shooting people. The government in England passed a law in the first year of this kind of five year cycle basically, saying that if you destroyed a machine, it was capital punishment. They hung 24 people publicly to try to stop this. They put out 12,000 people to fight them. It's doing the same views from the Napoleon Wars. So there's no guarantee of this being a smooth transition. Now, I'm not a reactionary person. And when you hear three to five years, it gets your attention. Elon's one of the smartest people alive and people can argue about the timeline. But Ray Kurzweil, a mutual friend of both of ours, he's been talking about 2029 for probably 20 years, and he's been the most accurate forecaster I know. Even if you go to Hinton, who's the founder of AI himself, he has a longer version. He goes 2030, 2040 So I'd say three to ten years is my guess. But I don't think all business will be gone or changed at that time period. But the question really is, how do you provide certainty for people? People ask me all the time, how do you provide certainty for people when the external world no longer offers certainty?