Last night, on our computers at least, Google’s new open source Gemini CLI started acting as if it were on mind altering drugs. Here’s our morning after report.
I spent the day yesterday working on an article about Google’s new open source AI-for-the-command-line tool, Gemini CLI. It’s basically an explainer on how to install it and the security precautions you should take before you start using it. Up until this point, I’d found Gemini CLI to be reasonably dependable and useful, and had even used the platform to take care of a few research issues—basically as a trial run for the article.
Then last night, when I returned to work on the article after watching a couple of episodes of Nine Perfect Strangers, I found Gemini CLI to be a basket case. If I didn’t know better, I’d suspect it had eaten some ‘shrooms.
Answers never came. Sometimes error messages would pop up on the screen, indicating that maybe there was a traffic issue or something. Gemini CLI also seemed to be doing a lot of thinking out loud. Like other AI platforms I’ve worked with, Gemini converts its processes into text while it’s working to answer a question, but last night those “thoughts” had nothing to do with answering the question—instead, it was gibberish filled with weird Star Trek images and the like.
Let me show you what I mean…
By this morning, Gemini CLI seemed to have recovered, although it did appear to be a little freaked out about the presence of a collection of screenshots under the heading “Gemini CLI in Trouble” in the directory I allow the platform to access. It also acted a bit like a person who’d blacked out at the bar the evening before, and implored me to let it look at the screenshots after I’d explained what they were and removed access. Eventually, I relented and showed it the screenshots, to which it responded:
I also showed it a rough draft of this article and asked it for a public comment.
Right now, I’m pretty gun-shy when it comes to Google’s Gemini, period. I’m not going to trust it for a while with any mission-critical workloads that require AI, and I’m definitely not giving the CLI version access to more than a single directory on any machine I might install it on.
I’ve reached out to Google for comment about last night’s issues, but have not yet received a response. When I do, I’ll tell you about it.
Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux
Be First to Comment