To write, perchance to think, in the age of chatbots

Opinion editor's note: Star Tribune Opinion publishes a mix of national and local commentaries online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

•••

A literary agent from Chicago phoned me out of the blue in the spring of 2000. Wildfires were in the headlines and would remain so for months. He wanted to represent a book about fire and called to see if I was interested. He sought drama and a "high body count." I had an idea meeting that spec and he sent me a contract.

A few weeks later he captured the attention of an editor at a major publishing house, and I was tasked with writing a formal book proposal to the tune of 10,000 words.

I began immediately, but the demands of my fire service vocation ramped up through the summer and into autumn, then came catch-up work with our firewood supply — crucial, since that's our primary heat source for the northern Minnesota winter. The book proposal languished, and I received a phone call from Chicago. Where was the proposal?

I launched into a recap of the fire season and was just getting into our firewood needs when he interrupted:

"I'm going to speak as your agent now. Are you ready?"

"I don't give a damn about your firewood!"

"Duly noted." I finished the proposal and shipped it.

The publisher accepted the proposal and mailed a contract. I signed it. The first third of a five-figure advance against royalties was sent to my agent in early December. He was to skim his 15% and write me check for several thousand dollars. I waited; and waited.

I finally phoned him, asking after my money. He launched into a mea culpa about last-minute Christmas shopping for his five kids. I interrupted him:

"I'm going to speak to you as your client now. Are you ready?"

"I don't give a damn about Christmas!"

"Duly noted." The check materialized a few days later.

That book proposal was more than publishing industry boilerplate or literary hoop-jumping. Those 10,000 words were important because to write is to think. You can speak without thinking — spewing the sometimes hurtful hip shots of the heart and the unbridled tongue. But it's evident to me that physically placing words in linear order on a screen or page demands active participation of the mind. As I labored through that proposal my goals came into sharper focus — some ideas expanded, others shriveled.

It may not be language per se that separates us from our closest animal cousins, but rather the writing of language, the act of making it visible for scrutiny, and for the even higher-level functions of editing and revision.

Writing is sometimes difficult because thinking is hard work, and while our brains constitute about 2% of our body weight, they consume about 20% of our energy. Does the brain require more energy when tackling complex cognitive problems as opposed to say, watching TV? In a 2018 Time magazine article, Ewan McNay, a professor of psychology and behavioral neuroscience at the University of Albany, reports, "The basic answer is yes." Writing imposes an energy surcharge. An essay, a poem, a letter, a diary entry, a novel — it's going to cost you.

An important tool in the students' quest for calm is writing. First, we require them to produce and display a written instructional objective. Choice of topic is up to them, so supposedly it's something they're comfortable with, but many spin their wheels regarding content and organization until they write an objective. As if by magic, the path forward becomes clear. I relish witnessing that epiphany.

Second, I urge students to write out the introduction to their presentation, further refining the thought process. I also suggest they memorize those opening paragraphs as an additional hedge against nervousness. We also promote the creation and use of a written outline, the "mapping" of the thought process.

Once a presenter has a clear goal supported by a solid outline, and can deliver an effective introduction without stumbling, they almost always perform well — or at least better than they expected to — and they achieve it by writing.

A basic facility with words — reading and writing — is one of the few skills we expect everyone in society to master. Most people will never do calculus, perform surgery or develop cosmological theories, but the intent is that everyone can write. Not least, it's an important tool of citizenship. Exploring your convictions and opinions with writing, then sharing them with elected and appointed officials at every level of government via email and hard copy letters, is empowering. It's no accident that African American slaves in the South were routinely denied literacy. In her recent book "Caste," Isabel Wilkerson wrote: "Something as ordinary to most humans as a father helping a son with his lessons was prohibited. A Black father in Georgia could be flogged for teaching his own child to read."

Literacy has often been a path to knowledge and freedom, but our digital age has introduced a wrinkle. Last November the software company OpenAI released the chatbot program ChatGPT, which transcends the traditional chatbot function of imitating a human conversationalist. In addition to creating software and answering questions, ChatGPT can generate poetry, essays, letters, news stories, compose music and play games. It's gained the most attention by producing sentences and paragraphs of "humanlike" writing. So far it's still subject to the GIGO (garbage in, garbage out) principle, since it was created and refined by people. As OpenAI notes, ChatGPT can "yield a lot of false positives and negatives sometimes with great confidence" and also "sometimes writes plausible-sounding but incorrect or nonsensical answers." Some users have voiced much harsher criticisms, but no one is positing that ChatGPT is currently a manifestation of the digital holy grail: a machine with a mind.

When I wrote that book proposal two decades ago, no one had to ponder its origin. But now: Let me attest that this essay you're reading was written by a human being with no assistance from a chatbot. Will such statements — perhaps notarized, or subject to blockchain authentication — become routine? And if that happens, how long before the software dominates by default — the path of least resistance and least cost? I don't know, but I suppose I'll still be able to cut firewood.