Short version: Roger challenged A.I. again. A.I. lost, again.

Long version: On several occasions, knowing the answer, I’ve stymied Artificial Intelligence large-language model (LLM) chat engines with which I have dedicated accounts, such as ChatGPT, Grok, and Microsoft Copilot. How? By asking it questions in subjects I know well, namely meteorology and Dallas sports. In one case, I didn’t know the answer for sure (a Dallas Cowboy player’s current number after some switches occurred, which is why I asked), but knew GPT’s answer was wrong. I also caught Grok giving me outdated information about a player the Colorado Avalanche had traded to the Dallas Stars, and who had been playing for the stars for a whole season; Grok thought he still was on the Avs. Most of the meteorological questions have yielded satisfactory answers, but a few from each need(ed) updating or revision.

The latest was a little different. While in the bathroom (a good time for such), suddenly an old song’s partial lyric popped into my head from the dusty neurological cobwebs of early childhood in the mid-’70s. In the real-life early morning, shortly after sunrise, a male voice sang it on a relative’s car radio, while he drove alongside a big lake somewhere east of Dallas — probably Tawakoni, given that one of my mom’s brothers lived over there, and what I recall about the lay of the land matching more-recent drives I’ve had. The voice sang to a catchy tune: “See the gentry in the country…”

Why that memory and set of words popped back into my head after so long is beyond explanation. Or as any good Texan might say, “Hell if I know!”

I looked up the lyric not using A.I., but instead a couple guesses of the singer based on the long-ago voice I fuzzily recalled. Canadian friends around my age or older already have guessed right: Don Quixote, originally from an album of the same name by the late Gordon Lightfoot (more recently on a greatest-hits album from the ’90s called Gord’s Gold). I hadn’t heard that song in at least 40 years…a damn good song too. Country stations of that era played some of his songs, and I’m sure that’s where I heard it on that long-ago drive.

Returning to my PC with MS Copilot already open (for some HTML-to-Excel transfer help), I challenged it to find the song with that verbatim lyrical snippet quoted. The first option it gave was a song I’ve never heard from 1995 by a British pop band: Country House by Blur. Wrong! That song doesn’t even contain that line. I told it so. Try again!

I then gave it a hint by saying I heard the song in the ’70s. It then suggested, “You’re right — the lyric “See the gentry in the country…” predates Blur’s Country House. It actually comes from Country Life by Roxy Music, released in 1974.” Then it did a made-up explanation and this “Key Takeaway: “The lyric you remember is from Roxy Music’s 1974 track Country Life, not Blur. Your memory of hearing it as a kid in the 1970s lines up perfectly with its release era.” Wrong again! Country Life was an album, not a song, and contained no song by that same name.

I wasn’t going to look up the lyrics for every song on that album, especially since I knew Copilot was mistaken again. So I told it, “No, that’s not it either. There’s no such song by that name on the album by that name. It was a plainer, folk-song sound. Male voice, acoustic guitar, not much else.” Surely Copilot has all of Gord’s great lyrics in it!

Not upfront, at least! Copilot replied with a few completely off-base British possibilities, seemingly fixated on the U.K. as lyrical origin. It was only an ocean off. By this time, Copilot was just spewing BS, and I caught it red-handed.

So I told it the correct answer and gave it this link to the lyrics. The response:

“Exactly right — the line “See the gentry in the country…” is from “Don Quixote” by Gordon Lightfoot, released in 1972 on his album of the same name.
🎵 About the Song
– Artist: Gordon Lightfoot
– Album: Don Quixote (1972)
– Style: Folk / singer-songwriter
– Theme: The song blends imagery of wandering knights, rural life, and social observation, with Lightfoot’s trademark straightforward folk delivery.
🌟 Why It Matches Your Memory
– Era: Early 1970s, right when you recall hearing it.
– Singer: Gordon Lightfoot’s warm, male folk voice — very different from glam or Britpop styles.
– Lyric: The line you remembered fits perfectly into Lightfoot’s folk storytelling, contrasting rural gentry with everyday life.
That’s a great catch — your memory of it being a straightforward folk tune from the 70s was spot on. Lightfoot’s Don Quixote is one of those albums where every track feels like a slice of lived-in storytelling.”

Notice how, even after I corrected the bot, it still acts authoritative, affirming I was right but not admitting it was wrong, a bit narcissistic, goalpost-shifting over to the reasons Lightfoot’s work was so well-regarded (true, but not what I asked).

Now consider a music or poetry student today, given an assignment involving only that line and given a reasonable homework assignment: “Discuss the meaning of this lyric by itself then in the context of its original song. Cite the song, album, singer, writer, and year.” If the student just lazily used Copilot (I only tried this there, not Grok or ChatGPT, where I also have accounts), he or she would get a terrible grade! Especially at OU! 😉

The obvious lesson here is that A.I. in general, and LLMs in particular, still are far from mature, or trustworthy. or flawless, and may be for a very long time. Instead of “trust but verify,” it’s “use wisely, don’t totally trust, and verify hard” with them. As I’ve stated before in many media, A.I. should be treated as a tool, not a crutch! Unfortunately I’m seeing many stories from my friends in K12 and college academia about regurgitated A.I. they’re getting in assignments. This rises serious ethical concerns that I won’t address here, except to acknowledge. Maybe in another post in the future?

Of course, now that I looked up the song and heard it again, and its tune is so catchy, I can’t get it out of my head.