Tony Robbins: AI, Suffering, and the Future of Meaning

Tony Robbins: I'm trying not to cry. I hate suffering. I've suffered myself and so I hate to see anybody suffer. This is my mission. This is what I'm made for. I'm just one guy. I can't do everything, but I can do a lot. I always try to help people say -- how can you turn your worst day into your best day?

Steven Bartlett introduces Tony Robbins as the nation's number one life and business strategist, noting his work with royalty, elite athletes, Oscar winners, and scientists.

Steven Bartlett: Can you take us back to the environment that shaped you into the man that you are?

Tony Robbins: I grew up in a tough environment. I had four different fathers. My mom drank alcohol and took prescription drugs. We had no money, no food. The thing that changed my whole life was a knock on the door on Thanksgiving. There was this tall guy standing there with two bags of groceries and an uncooked frozen turkey. My dad saw this man and said, "We don't take charity," and slammed the door. But it became a very useful distinction for me about how he and I processed that day differently. There are three decisions you make every moment of your life. My dad focused on the fact that he hadn't fed his family -- he felt worthless. I took it as: strangers care. And so what I decided to do was, someday I'm going to do this for others and end suffering where I can.

Steven Bartlett: What is the pattern you noticed in the most influential people you've worked with?

Tony Robbins: I found four things with them...

Tony Robbins: The first decision you make every moment is what you're going to focus on. You don't experience life -- you experience the life you focus on. Our brains delete, distort, and generalize. If you don't control your focus, you react. My dad's focus that day was that he hadn't fed his family. Mine was: there's food, what a concept. The second decision is meaning -- what does this mean? Is this the end or the beginning? The meaning produces the emotion. Out of the emotion comes the third decision: what am I going to do? My dad assigned the meaning that he was worthless. I assigned: strangers care. And so when I was 17, I went and fed two families. The woman at the first house grabbed my head and kissed me on the cheek. And driving away, I started crying uncontrollably. I realized my worst day was really my best day. Everything I've done since has come from not being fed.

Tony Robbins: That year I fed two families. Next year, four. Then eight. Then twelve. Then a million, two million. About twelve years ago I decided to feed a billion meals in ten years. We've been growing ever since. I always try to help people ask: how could you turn your worst day into your best day? That's when life is really magical.

Steven Bartlett: It's been 50 years since you met that young mother. And it still brings you to tears?

Tony Robbins: It really does. I hate suffering. I've suffered myself. Whether it's hunger or emotional hunger or depression or sadness -- I love human beings. I hate suffering. I love seeing when somebody awakens to who they are. We're all so much more than we perceive ourselves to be. My whole thing is to help people use stress rather than be used by it. I don't care how spiritual or rich you are -- every human being will go through extreme stress multiple times. If you're going through hell, keep going. You discover how strong you are, who your real friends are, and you get an inoculation to future stress.

Steven Bartlett: What is the most consequential thing we should be talking about as it relates to suffering and society?

Tony Robbins: AI -- but it's not just AI, it's nanotechnology, the rapid change in technology. If we believe technology is going to liberate us from labor -- and I think it will -- and we displace this many jobs in this short a period of time, jobs are not just money. Jobs are meaning. So we'll probably need UBI because the changes are going to happen so rapidly. I talked to President Obama ten years ago. I said, take just one sector: self-driving cars. There are eight million truck drivers, Uber drivers, and taxi drivers in the US alone. If I'm a business person and I can buy a truck that drives 24 hours a day, whose insurance is cheaper because it doesn't make mistakes, am I going to hire anybody? Those jobs are going to go. That's just one sector. We've got to retool those people now, while there are ten years to gear them up, because these are not people who are going to do it on their own.

Tony Robbins: If you go back to the Luddites in the 1800s -- you're from the UK, you know your history -- they came up with machines and how did people react? The same story repeats across history. Radical change, people displaced, they riot. They took hammers and destroyed machines. The UK passed a law: destroy a machine and it's capital punishment. They hung people. And fifteen years later the same thing happened again with thresher machines. If anything, thinking this transition will be smooth by doing nothing is wrong. The leverage is not in favor of taking care of society. The carrot is making a trillion dollars from the right LLM. The stick is if we don't do it, China's going to do it. So there's virtually no focus on safety and no focus on jobs. Right now, high school students are getting jobs more than college students for the first time in 50 years. You see the displacement already. Mark Benioff let go of 5,000 customer service agents -- now it's done with AI.

Tony Robbins: People talk about a post-work world. Elon talks about it being three to five years. Ray Kurzweil -- the most accurate predictor of technology in history -- has been saying 2029 for artificial general intelligence for almost 20 years. Hinton says 2030 to 2040. In the next three to ten years, this is going to happen. How are we prepared? I was just selected to be on the federal advisory committee for the president on health and human services -- on the mental health side -- and I'm hoping to use that position to bring more of government's focus into this category. Because this is suffering at the highest level -- not just financial suffering. Loss of identity suffering. If I am a coder, I am a truck driver, and I lose who I am...

Tony Robbins: We've already been in a post-work world, in a sense. For 4,000 years before the agricultural revolution, our identity was connected to our tribe -- our courage, our creativity, our storytelling, our generosity, our wisdom. We can find meaning outside of a job. But if you take a culture conditioned for 200 years to think a certain way, it's going to take a bridge. And the time compression is what I'm most concerned about.

Steven Bartlett: This feels even more extreme than historical transitions because you've disrupted both muscles and mind. And we're moving from LLMs to robots learning visually from the real world.

Tony Robbins: Yes. You and I have a conversation. I've been reading your book for hours to prepare. If either one of us learns something and we're a machine -- every machine knows it instantly. You push one button and they have all of that knowledge. People don't realize what this really means. And when robots are learning from the real world, not just LLMs -- our brains are predictive devices. Think about what it does to people when all of a sudden their labor is not needed.

Tony Robbins: It's no longer just blue-collar labor. It's white-collar labor. I own pieces of 95 private equity firms. I've seen quantum computing shrink those offices over five years. The guys making five to ten million a year are now unemployed. This has never happened before in history. And what's being done about it? More money is being put in to accelerate it. The carrot and the stick are driving everything. And I'm not a reactionary person, but 25 to 30 percent of people working in AI say it could potentially eliminate the human race. All technology has this challenge -- but this is a technology that keeps learning, can replicate itself, and that we don't fully understand. These AIs now have their own language. They're no longer talking to each other in English.

Tony Robbins: We're living in a world where the opportunity is greater than any time in history for us to be creators. But we're going to have to make sure we've got some parameters around safety and around what technology does to society. Retooling is the answer. And I don't believe most people will be replaced by AI -- they'll be replaced by somebody who knows how to use AI.

Steven Bartlett: Boston Dynamics explained that when one robot learns something -- how to pick up a book, how to make an omelette -- every robot learns it instantaneously.

Tony Robbins: It's leading us toward a great deal of violence because there are going to be people displaced just as has happened with every technology -- only this is a global event across multiple sectors simultaneously. If we don't have a plan there's going to be violence for a period. There are already more males aged 25 to 35 living at home not working than at any time in human history including the Depression. Some percentage have never approached a woman to ask her out. They play video games, their mom does their laundry, they order Uber Eats. That's just gamification. Imagine with AI. Some people are going to live there. Some are going to go the Star Trek route and figure out what makes human existence meaningful. The majority won't go the Star Trek route naturally. So we need a bridge. The time compression is what I'm most concerned about.

Steven Bartlett: If you were an 18-year-old Tony Robbins right now, what would you be doing?

Tony Robbins: I have five kids and five grandkids -- a 52-year-old daughter and a four-year-old daughter. So I'm thinking about this constantly. Most people, even successful ones, are stressed all the time. Why? Because they're managing their life. We're not made to manage circumstances. We're made to create. When we create, we're alive. When we just try to maintain or hold on, life is hard. So I'm teaching my kids to be creators. And then the three most important skills: pattern recognition, pattern utilization, and pattern creation. When you can recognize patterns, you eliminate fear. Fear comes from feeling that this has never happened before. But pattern recognition requires understanding history. Like understanding seasons -- that changed humanity.

Tony Robbins: The seasons freed us from fear. Before we understood them, you could do the right thing at the wrong time and get pain. Once we figured out: plant in spring, tend in summer, reap in fall, hold through winter -- all fear disappeared. And there are seasons to your life. Zero to 21 is springtime. 22 to 42 is your summertime -- the testing period. History shows it's the most difficult time for most people. 42 to 63 is fall -- if you planted and worked, now you can do more with your pinky than you could working around the clock. 64 onward is winter and a real transition into leadership -- by then you know who you are. You stop trying to prove yourself. You have unshakable relationships built over decades. You wake up knowing life is a gift.

Tony Robbins: Pattern recognition. Pattern utilization -- you don't just see the opportunity, you jump on it. And finally pattern creation -- you take enough input in and begin to generate something that's never existed before. That's when you become the best in your field. Tom Brady made pattern distinctions about keeping his body strong and reading defenses that no one else had made. That's when your value goes through the roof.

Tony Robbins: When I met Jim Rohn, I was 17, working as a janitor. I paid a week's wages -- $35, which is like $250 today -- to attend his seminar. He said: for things to change, you've got to change. At the end I went up and said I want to work for you. He said, you need to go through all my programs. That was $1,200 for one program -- like $10,000 today. I was sleeping in my car. But I went to five banks. The fifth banker -- Mrs. Williams -- said the bank won't loan the money but if you look me in the eye and swear you'll pay it back, I will. I went to Jim Rohn's seminar, went to work for him, and the first question I asked was: why do some people make billions and others work hard their whole lives without money? He said: we're equal as souls but not in the marketplace. The way to make more value is to become more valuable. My whole life became: how do I add more value?

Steven Bartlett: What are the tools I need to deal with stress and the algorithms pulling at my attention?

Tony Robbins: First step: take 15 minutes of your day for microlearning. Give me 15 of those scrolling minutes for something valuable -- a new language, philosophy, history, AI. The 1% growth compound is real. But the secret to any change is chunking. Some people chunk eating as one step and working out as 29,000 steps. If you chunk too big, it's overwhelming. Most people major in minor things -- they know more about a celebrity's love life than about their own values. Today you can learn from the brightest people on earth. They're available online, by coaching, everywhere. The tools are there. The only variable is whether you decide to be a creator.

Steven Bartlett: Is there a way to get better at pattern recognition?

Tony Robbins: First by understanding it's the most important skill. If I'm fearful, what's the pattern I'm missing? Also, I believe in journaling -- but it's more than that. You need a different state. Strategy, story, state -- that's how you have a breakthrough. Most people start with strategy (how to do something), which is the wrong order. The real problem is the story you have. The story is the belief you've told yourself over and over -- it's the invisible force that controls everything. And behind the story is your state. If you're in the right state, things flow. Your peak state unlocks what the strategy can't.

Steven Bartlett: What do you do right before going on stage to configure your state?

Tony Robbins: I do the cold plunge every morning. I've been doing it for 18 years. The real value is the mental discipline of not negotiating with yourself. When I say go, we go. I've trained my brain that way. Before going on stage I do a prayer -- "use me, Lord" -- I picture every person in the audience, see where they are and where they'll be by the end. Then I make explosive moves, shift my body radically, and storm out there. I take myself from zero to 20 in intensity so a nine feels relaxed. That's how I can hold 12,000 people for 12 hours.

Tony Robbins: I'm totally committed to diet, training, hyperbaric oxygen -- I'm a biohacker. I'm going to be 66 and produce results designed by a 25-year-old. I have more aerobic capacity and more muscle capacity today than I did then. I haven't found the limit yet.

Steven Bartlett: Young men increasingly are turning to religion, looking for meaning. There's a double-edged sword in the independence our culture promotes.

Tony Robbins: Yes. Your friends got depressed because we have six human needs. Certainty. Uncertainty -- because if you were certain about every moment, you'd be bored out of your mind. Significance -- the need to feel unique, special, important. Everyone has it. Fourth: connection and love. Everyone wants love but most people settle for connection because previous love was too painful when it ended. Fifth and sixth: growth and contribution. These are the spiritual needs. Not religious -- spiritual. Everything in the universe grows or dies. Your relationship, your business -- if it's not growing, it's dying. But when you grow, you have something to give. And that's where meaning lives.

Tony Robbins: Any belief, emotion, or behavior that meets at least three of the six needs becomes an addiction -- positive or negative. Violence meets certainty, variety, and significance. That's why it repeats. Social media gives people significance with zero confrontation or consequence -- that's what makes it so powerful and so corrosive simultaneously.

Tony Robbins: Certainty and uncertainty can be satisfied simultaneously -- you rent a movie you've already watched because you're certain it's good but hope you won't remember it all. The first four needs can be met online very easily: certainty through controlled communication, variety through infinite content, significance through tearing others down or building something meaningful, connection through online communities or AI companions. But growth and contribution cannot be met that way. If you're missing those two, you will not feel fulfilled no matter what else you have.

Tony Robbins: There's the science of achievement and the art of fulfillment. They are two different skills. In the east, people excel at fulfillment but can live in poverty. In the west, people build incredible external lives but their internal life suffers. I believe you can merge the two. Achievement has learnable rules. Fulfillment is an art -- it's different for every person. Success without fulfillment is failure.

Steven Bartlett: Of those 50 wealthy people you interviewed for your books, what was the common pattern?

Tony Robbins: First -- become an owner, not just a consumer. If you've bought an iPhone every year for 18 years, you've spent over $22,000. If you'd bought Apple stock on the same days you bought each phone, you'd have over $326,000. We don't teach people to think that way. Then the four investment principles: one, don't lose money -- most people focus on making money but if you lose 50% you need 100% to get back. Two, asset allocation -- don't put all eggs in one basket. Three, asymmetric risk-reward -- risk a little to make many times more. Paul Tudor Jones's standard: risk one to make five. Four, diversification -- but real diversification including private equity and private credit. Basic private equity has outperformed every stock market in the world for 40 years. The S&P averages 9% -- a million dollars becomes $28 million in 39 years. Basic private equity averages 15.7% -- the same million becomes $328 million.

Tony Robbins: Ray Dalio said to me: the holy grail of investing is to find 8 to 12 uncorrelated investments you feel strongly about. If you find those, you reduce your risk by 80% and keep -- or slightly enhance -- your upside. Most things are correlated today. The only way to get real non-correlation is through private investment: private equity, private credit, private real estate. You have to diversify beyond just stocks and bonds.

Steven Bartlett: Is your superpower learning?

Tony Robbins: Yes. Pattern recognition, pattern utilization, pattern creation -- that is what learning is. If you don't learn at a rapid tempo right now, you're cheating yourself of an extraordinary life.

Tony Robbins: I believe in immersion and spaced repetition. Languages learned in schools are forgotten in years. Immersion -- being dropped in Rome for 90 days with no one to speak to in English -- works. That's why my events are 50 to 60 hours over four days. Time disappears when you're in a peak state and immersed. I use AI now to capture what I want to remember -- principles, patterns, structures I want to evaluate and return to.

Steven Bartlett: Mark Benioff wrote you a letter.

Tony Robbins: I love Mark. He is a model of what a great CEO is -- someone who understands social impact as deeply as business impact. He came to four or five of my seminars in a row, then came up after and said: you've convinced me. I'm going to leave Oracle and start my own business. I want you to come on the journey with me. It's called Salesforce.com. He said, "I promise we'll get to a hundred million dollars." Now he's at forty-two billion. His letter to me talks about how our relationship has been through his highest heights and most difficult moments. Business and politics are temporal -- relationships are eternal. I feel the same way about him.

Steven Bartlett: What is the pattern you've seen in exceptional founders and entrepreneurs?

Tony Robbins: The business has to be more than a vehicle for money. In the beginning of a business, it's like having a child -- you don't get a lot back, you work around the clock. If you're only doing it for money, you'll stop when it gets hard. You need a vision others are moved by, because you can't build an organization without great people. And you have to constantly find leaders who are smarter than you in various areas. The single common denominator of people who succeed at massive scale is hunger. Not intelligence -- I know very smart people who can't succeed. Not a hunger to achieve a specific target. An unquenchable hunger to be more, do more, give more. Those are the people whose names you know because they have impact.

Steven Bartlett: What is the most important thing we should have talked about that we didn't?

Tony Robbins: I hope people leave with this: if I'm stressed, I've got to stop managing and start creating. Creating life on your terms. Decide what the immutables are -- if you want to take the island, burn your boats. If you have a way back, you'll go back. You must master the science of achievement and the art of fulfillment. Achievement has real rules that are immutable. Fulfillment is an art -- it's different for every person. I'll give you an example. Steve Wynn showed me an $87 million Rothko. A red square. I said, "They missed some spots." He knew what every brushstroke meant -- the man's life story. I saw a red square. The richness of life is going deep enough that what looks like a red square to someone else becomes your thing, your experience, your fuel. Find what that is for yourself. Because if you succeed and you're not fulfilled, what have you got?

Steven Bartlett: A closing question from the previous guest: if you could choose your lifespan, how long would it be and at what point would you choose to die?

Tony Robbins: I'd want to live as long as my family does -- and longer now, because I have a four-year-old. My minimum goal is 92. With stem cells and biochemistry, maybe past 100. I'd like a century of living and giving. The only fear I've really felt is dying too soon -- I want to squeeze everything out of life while I'm here. Not forever. But as long as I'm useful, interested, and able to enjoy it. Legacy is what I leave when I'm gone -- impact that continues without me being there. I'm building AI tools for therapeutic interventions already in 50 languages. I want 24/7 support available to everyone on earth. Nothing in the universe is destroyed -- it changes form. I don't know what that looks like consciously. All I want is to live fully while I'm here and take the next journey when it comes.