It's time for Stars on Sports! A podcast-radio show dedicated to sharing stories about our athletic program at Lansing Community College. LCC athletics has a strong tradition. 25 national championship wins! Over 190 All-Americans! 19 MCCAA All Sports trophies! Stars on Sports will introduce you to individuals that have contributed to our program success and give you the backstory on what it takes to develop it. We'll also dive into and break down the topics and issues facing athletic departments across the nation and right here at LCC. This is Stars on Sports!

Good morning and welcome to another episode of Stars on Sports. I am joined today by our assistant athletic director, Steven Cutter, and our producer, Daedalian Lowry. And ladies and gentlemen, today we're going to be talking about AI artificial intelligence. And it's been prevalent in our news. I was listening to one of our previous podcasts when we were forecasting the year and we briefly talked about that and said we would follow up with it. So here at that time, I was at a conference last week and I was working with a colleague and they use AI crazy amount, I mean, for almost everything. And they're a teacher part time and they were putting lesson plans in and then fine tuning it to a quiz just telling you how efficient and effective he was with it. And so I dived into AI and when I think of AI, I think of ChatGPT, but in sports, it is so much more than that. I mean, and we again, even in our previous podcast, we talked about how the baseball program and even some of our other programs have been utilizing baseball wearable technology, but in other programs for recruiting, scouting and game analytics. It was crazy, really. And I don't think we'll get all to it today, but I thought it was about time to talk about that and how we use it at LLCC and even in a general sense of using it in athletic administration throughout college athletics. And I don't use it. I haven't used it. As I talked about in our previous podcast over winter break, the AI ChatGPT part of it, I did a sample wedding toast and that's what I did. And I haven't gone back to it, but I need to for efficiency and effectiveness. I mean, again, wearable technology. I have a smartwatch. I get to be a part of your program and use the Python watch. And you know, I work with stats a lot because I'm, you know, we're our sports information directors too. So. But with the ChatGPT, and I don't want to keep saying ChatGPT because there are other forms of generation. But I do want to touch on a couple of different of those things. I mean officiating, advertising, you talked about it a little bit before the podcast on writing things or presentations, equipment, the wearable technology. And again, there's just so many ways it can go. Just quickly, your initial thought on artificial intelligence in sports.

Well, I have a quote that says artificial intelligence won't replace great coaches, but coaches who use AI will replace those who don't.

Ooh, that's a good one. I need to think about that one.

I think that's probably fair to say in a lot of occupations.

Yeah, absolutely, it is fair to say. And again, I agree. One of the things that every time I would read something about AI, it would like, what are the cons? And the one thing to remember is sports is still human factors to the core. And we talked about that earlier today of performance of the human actually doing it that AI can't replace, although it is an officiating a little bit as I think the MLB is chasing.

So when I think about AI, I think about efficiency. If you're chasing things like efficiency, AI can provide you with that efficiency. That doesn't mean that you just take and copy and paste everything that it's putting out, but it can definitely streamline some of the things that you're trying to do. More of the mundane tasks, the everyday things, you can streamline, those become more efficient. I also look at AI as somewhat of a friend of mine in a lot of ways because I will end up putting things in there and it will provide me with feedback for what my thoughts are. And so it's almost like I'm talking to somebody that's sitting right next to me and I'll be looking for feedback. You know, what is a high performing entrepreneur that has a top 100 business in the world going to say about this? This, you know, and kind of prompting, not for everyday level conversations but for some feedback from, you know, that degree of type of person. And, and that definitely helps in a lot of different ways, provide you with some different ideas.

Definitely speeds up the research because you could have done all that on your own, of course, right through Google or.

Anything else, but it just, it speeds it up. And, and, and once again, that goes back to what I initially started talking about with just efficiency. It speeds things up.

Yeah. And we all need to be more efficient in what we do, especially as more things are thrown on us or that we are dealt with or in the society where we keep moving on to certain things. So I think that's where it will help me more, is trying to be more efficient. I mean, you talked about before the podcast how even like doing stats, how if you did that on your own, that could be a tedious task, that takes hours. Where now AI can help us significantly lower that time. I mean, significantly in your eyes. And that's important because it allows you to be doing other things or really now then analyzing that stats, which also AI can do, so you can move forward with it. And Daedalian, what about you? Anything you think of right away when you think of AI?

Yeah, I actually use it quite a bit in the role that I do here at the college. They actually started, I want to say, about maybe a year ago, they started utilizing something called AI Spark in the podcast platform that we use to distribute the podcasts. And one of the things the features is, first of all, it generates a transcript, which AI does most of the time anyway and has been doing for a long time. But in addition to that, it'll go through. And if we were to sell ads, even though we don't really do that in our podcast, it gives you little areas where it would be easy to sell an ad. It separates things. Our conversation right here that we're having, it'll take and it'll separate where the chapters would be interesting. And for me to do that, to go through and do that with 30 different podcasts, that's a lot of time.

Right.

But the other thing it does, and I think what I've found the most helpful, is writing show notes. I don't actually use the show notes verbatim because AI, I think, is a tool. And I also think it's still in the process of learning a lot of things. It's kind of like a toddler and we're teaching it. And it's kind of funny because you're supposed to be able to put into these show notes. I would like a humorous tone, but it does not understand humor at all. There's certain things it just doesn't understand yet.

Yeah. And that bad humor is a good one.

And I always have to correct my name every time I.

And I thought you had used it for show notes before. In a previous meeting we had. And you're right. If you take it verbatim. I mean, it shouldn't be used for that context. It should be used to give you a guideline or utilize. The other thing that hit me in the last week that made me think I need to use AI is then a zoom meeting. And all of a sudden up in the chat, one of the people in attendance said like recording just activated AI for note summary and they were leaving the meeting. I'm thinking crazy. It came up at the beginning when it said this zoom meeting being recorded. Now it says this is being summarized by AI. Even though we had a person in our meeting that was taking minutes, but this person didn't want to wait for that. Now that's happened twice in two meetings I've been at. So I'm thinking, wow, I really need to get to know this and understand it and learn it because it makes sense. It could eliminate that secretary position in the future like you do for show notes that help you to do that. But again, the caution there is still the human element of checking it or and we've talked about kids turning in papers that some use it and don't proofread, which I think a problem in all our society. We don't proofread enough that write, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite is a process to get a final document. And I think that's where we're at with a little bit of AI. We rely on it too much that we might not check it as well as we should have. One of the interesting statistics that I saw, and I don't know this is accurate within one of the documents I read it, but another use of AI in sports is predictions outcomes. Now, especially in the sports gambling world, AI helped determine those scores and such injuries were a big part of it. But it said it's 40% accurate at this time. So not real high, but getting better than I'm sure when it first started. And from what I see, it probably started around eight years ago. But it's really the last two years have really been where it's exponentially grown so much that the Olympics were kind of the first big event this last summer that really used AI, the integrated component for workflows, for storytelling, for explaining sport that people don't know about, and for the viewer experience, which I think is where AI will probably help us the most in the future is fan experience. Really back to the social media and the short attention span that AI can really help with the fan experience at events.

I also think it gives us a platform to amplify human potential. And you know, we talked about experience a little bit, but with the human potential we're capable of so much and you just have a right hand partner or left hand partner that's next to you to be able to amplify that potential if you know how to use it and if you're looking to cut corners and just, you know, take everything verbatim and copy and paste. I, I think you're missing the, the genuineness of the human experience. But it certainly is a powerful thing that if used correctly can certainly enhance your performance.

Yeah. And back to your quote earlier about coaches. Coaches still have the coach. Can it help them coach better? Yes.

It also helps them because they're able to focus on the relationship piece more in the mental development without having to do all of the crossing the T's and dotting the I's and.

And one of. And right. Clashing the T's and dotting the I's. Because one of the benefits from AI from Wombrad is how specific can get. It can help you get with each individual, especially predicting an injury or coming up with an injury rehab program.

Customized training.

Customized. Thank you. Yes.

For individuals. Yes.

And then the same on the other side is the virtual reality, which I also know your program uses how that has as we talked about before in this podcast, how do you and we've even seen with our team, when you get to the big game, how do you prepare for it or how do you make practices? And virtual reality has helped with that. It doesn't replace it, but it helps.

Definitely stacks bricks in the proper direction.

We couldn't go a podcast without using the word bricks. So we need to have an over under of how many times we use the word bricks in our podcast. And AI could probably help us with that.

Hey, we haven't said anything about your parking in a while. So, you know.

No, we haven't. But my last podcast, I told you I did my best parking job that I have done. But I park on the fourth floor where it's not as busy. So I'm just getting pretty good at backing up.

You know, AI can actually do your parking.

Well, see, my car doesn't have that. I need a car that does this. I just put it in and let it do for me. But you're right, even another world of automobiles. How you know, I was leaching the vehicle and it had all the bells and whistles of, you know, let me know there's a car here. Or if I get too close to a car, it slows me down. And now I went to a used car and I, I missed some of that. Like, I'll tell you the biggest thing I learned now we're digressing is like in my old car, it kept me between the lines, like if you went over it would mess. And actually I was a little worried because Sometimes in the snow, it messed with it. But then when I'd go drive my wife's car, I almost got a little lazy because I expected the car to do its thing for me, you know, especially with construction on 27, it was, you know, nerve wracking. So digressing. But yes, AI outside of the sports world is really impacting.

I don't know that much of a digression. It just shows how much AI is going to influence, influence us or be a part of our lives. No matter what you do, you're not going to escape it.

That is true. You aren't. And people are worried about it. I mean, there's a lot of fears and it's going to take over the world. But it comes to anything in life. It's balance and moderation and using it in the right context. Again, there's cheating involved with AI and again the extreme even in the classroom. We've talked about it and probably should do a session at our formation days on using it the right way in the classroom and in the field.

I mean, sure, these same conversations were being had when the Internet was coming out too. And you're trying to balance technology with human judgment and, you know, the same conversations. So it just shows that we're progressing as a society and things are moving along in our world. And, and it's no different than the Internet or those that had the encyclopedias in their homes. It's what do you do with it? If they just sit on a bookshelf and nobody pulls them out and goes through them, then it really doesn't matter that you have it. And so it's the people that are using it and using it for really tactical advantages and to grow better and grow more efficient.

And it is moving rapidly. I mean, and it's hard for sports rules to stay caught up with it. Even as we look at baseball or football with the sideline technology where, you know, we've had issues in the past of intercepting headsets or signs or illegal videotaping of games.

Not that long ago you weren't able to wear one of these in a baseball game. Just this right here. And now you'll see kids with multiple watches on and it's all fine now.

Yeah. And it helps communication, it eliminates some things that. And it works. I think those are benefits. One of the issues is cost. It's still expensive in some facets, but hopefully more companies come out. Like even our streaming and streaming. The big thing that the pandemic helped exponentially change. I joke streaming is One of the trainer needs to be at a game and we need to stream our event. And the technology, there's automated cameras now that can pick up motion and moving. Not in all sports yet. Yeah, but it's getting there. But you know how that has evolved and helped us out and you know, made it more think more accessible to everyone. But again it's difficult. You know those are costs involved and we're you know, trying to balance that and costs have come down. But there's certain group that were ahead of the game that had a monopoly on it that now have evolved and there's more competition and more company that do different things such as stream live stats, scouting and analytics. And it's almost hard, more overwhelming to figure out what to use. And that's a big topic in our office right now as we move forward on how to maximize that we can do all those things for all our sports because right now we only do them for a couple and things again technology has grown to allow baseball and softball. We're one of the last ones that they developed cameras for streaming mean it's still in the four you know, development stages of that. And your group done an excellent job just with different cameras to to stream games. But it's important. I mean it is here to stay. So yeah it I think of again I just keep thinking of like chat GPT but I'm dealing with it every day. And you brought up the good example. Even before technology like encyclopedias were a resource to use things. You know, if you were in a fraternity or sorority, you had classmate that you utilize for help in in those assignments. Now with technology doing a lot of that for I laugh at this because it's called an iPhone but the phone feature the least amount of thing that we probably use on this thing.

I very rarely make calls anymore.

That's crazy. I don't. I agree. But I actually like it as a business call because again it hinks. You know another part of technology, it syncs to my hearing aid. So I hear better on the phone than I do an office phone where it doesn't magnify or amplify the sounding but it's here to stay. I don't want to lose that human element whether it's relationship, whether it's conversation, whether it's officiating. I worry about the officiating piece and how it's taken over there. Again, I think our society is having less tolerance for human error when being human is to air.

I think it even puts a higher priority on human communication. Verbally. And so that becomes a very large thing because a lot of things that you. Whether it's an email or a text or anything else, you're not really sure if it was AI generated or not. But with the verbal technology, you know where that's coming from. And so it puts a bigger priority on being able to communicate with words. Because ultimately, in our world, as we continue to progress forward, we still have to be able to communicate. And we've talked on previous podcasts how important communication is, whether it's on sports teams or families or business environments.

I hate to digress even more, but kind of interesting to that notion is when I went to a conference in Florida, like back in January, I'd have to say 40% of the sessions on podcasting were about AI. And there was one podcaster they had set up so that, like, all of her episodes were done by AI in her voice. Now, she's very upfront about it and she lets people know, but that's what the topic of her podcast was, AI. And it was just interesting because you'd listen to it and you'd never know it wasn't her.

That's crazy.

I mean, it's just. Yeah, it blows your mind.

It does. And I don't. One of me is plenty. We don't need an automated person of me. But you talked about using it for presentations and such and be able to search videos. It's almost like Google, in a sense, the new Google of putting it in there and coming up with answers for you, and then you take it and run with it.

Yeah, it's like Atari to Nintendo Sputter.

It is. I mean, that's what it was supposed to be. And quicker. Which time is better graphics of the issue. Yeah. And it only will continue to get better. And back to your quote, if we don't embrace it, we'll get left behind, unfortunately. And that's where I'm at. I haven't embraced it as well as I should have that. I. That's, you know, a goal of mine now is to use it more in moderation in a way to help me be more efficient in my office environment.

It can help you with some of those home projects, too.

Well, I need all the help I can get there. And that's, again, another way to not digress. But how it does, it just. It is such. It's just such bigger than sports. It shows that sports is a microcosm of society, because I do believe it starts in sports. I think sports have been able to test a lot of Things that it can carry over into other parts of the world and vice versa. We're going to end it there for now and we'll have many more conversations on AI. I might use AI in the future to generate my last question, but I have two today.

Give it a run. That's a good place to start.

Yes, it is, actually, I will. But as we record this podcast, it's March Madness, the NCAA basketball tournament. So my first question is, do either of you fill out a bracket for March Madness?

No.

No.

Interesting. Wow. Okay. Well, I fill out one with my family. I don't join all the pool and everything and you know, but we had student athletes in our office today and they were talking, you know, they were, you know, cross country kids, but they knew everything about every team in the basketball tournament thinking I have to go home and tweak my bracket. But it is such a special event. So.

So you do?

I do with just my fam. I mean, I fill one out, but I used to do one at my previous employer, but I was included in that. But I don't do that anymore, technically.

Do you feel typically find that you're on the money?

No, no, no. I usually do it Sunday night right after it. And I don't have enough time to really study college basketball throughout the year to really know which team. Plus my heart. There you go. That's where I was going with that.

Little more knowledge.

This is your time to give it a try.

Wow. That's create a bracket for me. I don't even think of that. That's where I got. I got to get into the mindset of thinking of using AI to use it. But it is a big sporting event and I don't know, you know, relatively comparably speaking of what it is compared to others. But I like the tournament, you know, the College World Series in baseball, the College World Series in softball. I mean these are fun time of year, these kind of sporting events where they're the bracket where the best team doesn't always win, but the team playing the best will win this time of year. Matchups and seeds, you know, like right now our NJCA basketball tournaments are going on right now and you know, our women just missed it for the second year in a row. So we're watching and seeing the team there to see what we got to do. And the same with the men's tournament going on right now. And we got closer there at the end of the season went on. So, you know, those kind of events help make sports fun and people watch and so that's going on in our psych and talking to cross country kid today about college basketball. So it brings people together and a lot of people do fill out a bracket. Like there's mascot brackets out there. There's, you know, favorite color team or favorite name of team brackets out there. So I use of those to help pick my team because I just don't study it enough. And I do. Okay. I mean, I usually finish in the top half, but I don't win it. So. One other question though, because this is killing me. I was at this conference and we were practicing interviews with people and one of the questions one of the ads asked was non negotiable. What's a non negotiable for you? And we'll talk about it in coaching. But my first instinct is raisins and cookies. That's a non negotiable that raisins should not be in cookies. So what do you think about raisins and cookies?

Raisins and cookies. I think they definitely have a place.

Wow, man. Cutter. We are in different food palettes.

Yeah, I gotta agree with Cut on this one because I dig raisins. I know why people don't like them. I get it.

Great. Oatmeal raisins.

That's exactly. It goes great with oatmeal cookies.

I do not like. I like oatmeal chocolate chunk cookie, not oatmeal raisin cookies. Okay, that's good to know. You both would have raisins in your cookie because in future podcast, I love cookies. We're going to talk about crumble and other cookies. But. But for now, you both like raisins in your cookies.

I'm not going to say I like.

It, but it's not one of your favorite. You will eat them. I won't eat them. You'll eat them. One of your favorites. Sure it is. Do you like raisins in your trail mix?

Yes.

Yeah, it doesn't bother me. I don't mind that.

Yeah, I like raisins just as raisins, but not in other things.

For some reason, seeing that like 80s commercial with the Raisinets, I think they were something like that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Two scoops of raisins or something like that. Yeah, yeah. So you're not opposed to raisins?

No, no, no. Just.

Just certain things.

You don't like Raisin Bran. So anyway, until next time, go stars.

Stars on Sports is recorded live at the WLNZ studios. Engineering and production assistance are provided by Daedalian Lowry. You can listen to this episode and other episodes of Stars on Sports on demand at LCCconnect.org to find more information about our athletic program, visit LCCstars.com thanks for listening. Go Stars!