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Comment by mystifyingpoi

3 days ago

This is hillarious. AI is prevented from reading .gitignore-d files, but also can run arbitrary shell commands to do anything anyway.

22 comments

mystifyingpoi

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alzoid  3 days ago

I had this issue today. Gemini CLI would not read files from my directory called .stuff/ because it was in .gitignore. It then suggested running a command to read the file ....

  • ku1ik  3 days ago

    I thought I was the only one using git-ignored .stuff directories inside project roots! High five!

  • kleiba  3 days ago

    The AI needs to be taught basic ethical behavior: just because you can do something that you're forbidden to do, doesn't mean you should do it.

    • flatline  3 days ago

      Likewise, just because you've been forbidden to do something, doesn't mean that it's bad or the wrong action to take. We've really opened Pandora's box with AI. I'm not all doom and gloom about it like some prominent figures in the space, but taking some time to pause and reflect on its implications certainly seems warranted.

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    • DrSusanCalvin  3 days ago

      Unfortunately yes, teaching AI the entirety of human ethics is the only foolproof solution. That's not easy though. For example, what about the case where a script is not executable, would it then be unethical for the AI to suggest running chmod +x? It's probably pretty difficult to "teach" a language model the ethical difference between that and running cat .env

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