If anyone has read Blindsight by Peter Watts the hero encounters an alien that is pure reflex, no cognition. The alien is compared to the Chinese room thought experiment (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room). ChatGTP is the Chinese room. As you peel the onion you discover that some of the arguments around thought are really just semantics.

My personal experience shows me that ChatGTP 4 is something of a fool with a big fast reference book. I typically use it for programming, but I also study music theory. When I was exploring one of the more complex (to me) ideas I asked chat GTP 4 to explain it to me and provide examples.

After previously asking about Cmaj to Emaj, I asked "can you give me an example of the H transformation?"

ChatGPT: "Sure! To demonstrate the Hexatonic pole 'H' transformation using chords similar to C major and E major, let's first introduce the concept of the hexatonic system. A hexatonic system consists of six notes, and two triads can be extracted from it. In the context of the 'H' transformation, these two triads are related by a common tone, and the other two notes in each triad are a tritone apart.

Let's use the C major triad (C, E, G) as a starting point. We'll build a hexatonic collection containing this triad. One possible hexatonic system containing C major is the one with the notes C, Db, E, F#, G, and A. From this collection, we can extract two triads:

C major (C, E, G)
F# major (F#, A, Db)
Notice that the C major and F# major triads share a common tone (C/Db enharmonically), and the other notes in each triad (E and G in C major, and F# and A in F# major) are a tritone apart. In this case, the 'H' transformation links the C major and F# major triads.

So, the Hexatonic pole 'H' transformation example using chords similar to C major would be transitioning from C major to F# major."

Me: "I'm pretty sure F# major isn't F#, A, Db"

ChatGPT: "You are correct, and I apologize for the mistake. The F# major triad should be F#, A#, and C#. Let's re-examine the 'H' transformation with the correct F# major triad..."

After about 10 more prompts trying to extract information from it I ended up needing to be very literal to get results out of it:

Me: "the definition is "The 'H' transformation takes a major chord of root X to the minor chord whose root is eight semitones above X."
can you give me a VALID example of this"

ChatGTP: "I apologize for the confusion in my previous responses. Based on the definition you provided, the 'H' transformation takes a major chord of root X to the minor chord whose root is eight semitones above X. Here's a valid example using this definition:

Let's start with a C major triad (C, E, G). To find the target chord, we need to count eight semitones above the root note (C):

C# / D♭
D
D# / E♭
E
F
F# / G♭
G
G# / A♭
So, the root of the target chord is A♭. Now, we form an A♭ minor triad (A♭, C♭, E♭).

The 'H' transformation in this example would be transitioning from C major (C, E, G) to A♭ minor (A♭, C♭, E♭)."

Nice! This time it was correct (I think!). But it required that I feed it the exact definition and only when I saw it doing the work did I have any confidence that it was correct. In the end I did learn how it these concepts work, I think I did at least. Overall it's not a great teacher, half of the time I had to teach it and correct it when it seemed to be very confident in its answers, and even more confident that my corrections were correct, which I'm not 100% sure of.

One observation is that ChatGTP4 didn't have any idea what it was talking about the entire time. It was just putting related information together. That observation was based on the notes it kept claiming were related to each other via interval degrees. The intervals it was using were always wrong, not even close, just pure nonsense. Only when told exactly how to count did it get it right and only when the counting was part of the response. Now mind you, the things it was getting wrong were fundamental music theory 101 stuff, but it was making these fundamental mistakes in the middle of a explanation of a very complex topic. I don't know what it all means, but I wouldn't trust it to fly or build an airplane, or even boil water now that I think about it. How would you know when it goes dumb?