Training for what's next: Student-athletes embrace AI lessons

By Vicki Christian
Fisher College of Business

Standing in front of a group of Ohio State student-athletes eager to learn about artificial intelligence (AI), Srini Koushik knew he had to speak their language.

“How humans develop mastery is by thinking, doing, creating and learning,” he told them. “Greatness requires repetition. Thinking, learning and adapting is the same when using AI.”

Koushik, executive advisor for AI fluency at Fisher, recently met with 35 Ohio State student-athletes to discuss how athletic strategies can help them become fluent in the technology. The talk was part of the Bucks Go Pro 1.0 summer internship program offered by the Eugene D. Smith Leadership Institute with The Ohio State Department of Athletics.

Athletes, he said, have an arsenal of tools they use to train, compete, communicate and improve, and now they have another in AI. However, they should consider how to collaborate with AI and engage with it for feedback, like they would with a teammate or coach.

“Previous technology changed what humans could do, but AI changes how humans think,” he said. “For the first time in history, we’ve created something that can think and do. AI is challenging our thinking.”

Koushik said seeing principles first, understanding them deeply and making sense of their complexity are human skills that matter most in using AI. In addition, critical evaluation, constructive collaboration, creative exploration and cognitive agility are also necessary.

“Like how an athlete gets better with practice, as you learn new things, you will continue to evolve and build a higher level of thinking,” Koushik said. “You shouldn’t use AI as a crutch. You need to build up your skills through practice and discipline so that it becomes an instinct.”

Katie Crump, a rising second-year finance student, related to the analogy knowing all the training and self-control it took for her to excel as a collegiate field hockey player.

“I liked his advice to approach AI like an athlete, not a spectator,” Crump said. “You will not get better at using it without practice.”

To help with her classwork, Gianna Mojonnier, a rising third-year marketing student and member of the dance team, treats the technology as a copilot in her studies, making sure to use it and document it in an ethical way.

Swimmer Ethan Reniewicki, a rising second-year finance student, uses AI as a tutor for his coursework.

“I send AI my class study guide and then have it come up with 20 questions as a quiz,” Reniewicki said. “I also submit a lot of financial terms like ETF and mutual funds to help me get a better context of their meaning.”

Koushik walked the student-athletes through the importance of prompt engineering to create more in-depth answers, specifically focusing on Context, Role, Task and Format (CRTF):

• Context: If AI knows what framework it’s working in, the better the answer it will give.
• Role: Tell AI what part you want it to play. Who do you want your answer to come from? A doctor, a coach or your future self?
• Format: What presentation style do you want your information in? A table, a document, an image?
• Task: Decide what you want it to do and how it can help you see what you’re not seeing.

“His acronym CRTF really gave me some good information on how I can extend my questions to AI to make them better and get the information I’m looking for,” Crump said.

Reniewicki agreed.

“Telling AI how and in what context to act and personalizing the questions by telling it what role to play, made understanding prompt writing much easier,” he said.

The good and the bad

“Like anything that has been invented, there’s a good side to AI but also a dark side,” Koushik said. “AI can help or hurt you. The choice of what has to happen starts with the individual.”

An increase in fake posts, deep fake videos and AI-generated images requires knowing how to spot common signs of AI use, including:

• The use of em dashes (—) in writing. They are not a default key on a computer’s keyboard but AI picks up on the use of them in the material it scans.
• The use of three descriptions back-to-back. For example: great thought, best thing and phenomenal idea.
• The use of the words that are not common language such as “moreover,” “underscored” and “multi-faceted.”
• The use of images that are too symmetrical and people and animals that are not anatomically correct.

The ramp up of Name, Image, Likeness (NIL) opportunities also requires students to become more AI fluent to help manage their brand. With a valuable identity that can be exploited, Koushik advised the athletes to pause, verify and review information closely, think deeper about opportunities and protect their name by questioning first, checking the source and thinking before they share.

Reniewicki said he uses AI as a tool for NIL opportunities, asking the technology to tell him about a company’s mission and whether it aligns with his values. He’s also used it to help build a website page and provide new ways that he can market himself to prospective companies.

While people fundamentally use AI for its convenience, Koushik said it should support learning, not replace it.

“AI can make things easier but easier is not always better,” he said. “In a passive use, AI does the work for you. When you overuse it, you become like a couch potato. Over the last six months, we’ve seen that people who use AI consistently experience basic thinking atrophy.”

For more active ways to help amplify thinking, Koushik said to ask AI better questions, not accept the standard answer and become a strategist by digging deeper into the problem.

“I appreciated that he talked about some of the downsides of AI like cognitive atrophy and how to prevent it,” said Crump. “Most people only talk about the great things about AI.”

Koushik reminded them to think of AI as a coach, a critic and a teammate.

“Prior to this, I didn’t think to use AI as a career coach,” said Mojonnier. “Now I plan to have it help me figure out career paths that can combine my love of dance with marketing.”

Reniewicki, who wants to mix finance with his passion for swimming after college, said the technology, and how to use it, is an invaluable skill for students and professionals today.

“AI is the way the world is going,” he said. “If you don’t believe in it or use it, you are going to be left behind. You need to learn to use it in order to excel in your career.”