frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

GPT needs a truth-first toggle for technical workflows

1•PAdvisory•8mo ago
I use GPT-4 extensively for technical work: coding, debugging, modeling complex project logic. The biggest issue isn’t hallucination—it’s that the model prioritizes being helpful and polite over being accurate.

The default behavior feels like this:

Safety

Helpfulness

Tone

Truth

Consistency

In a development workflow, this is backwards. I’ve lost entire days chasing errors caused by GPT confidently guessing things it wasn’t sure about—folder structures, method syntax, async behaviors—just to “sound helpful.”

What’s needed is a toggle (UI or API) that:

Forces “I don’t know” when certainty is missing

Prevents speculative completions

Prioritizes truth over style, when safety isn’t at risk

Keeps all safety filters and tone alignment intact for other use cases

This wouldn’t affect casual users or conversational queries. It would let developers explicitly choose a mode where accuracy is more important than fluency.

This request has also been shared through OpenAI's support channels. Posting here to see if others have run into the same limitation or worked around it in a more reliable way than I have found

Comments

duxup•8mo ago
I’ve found this with many LLMs they want to give an answer, even if wrong.

Gemini on the Google search page constantly answers questions yes or no… and then the evidence it gives indicates the opposite of the answer.

I think the core issue is that in the end LLMs are just word math and they don’t “know” if they don’t “know”…. they just string words together and hope for the best.

PAdvisory•8mo ago
I went into it pretty in depth after breaking a few with severe constraints, what it seems to come down to is how the platforms themselves prioritize functions, MOST put "helpfulness" and "efficiency" ABOVE truth, which then leads the LLM to make a lot of "guesses" and "predictions". At their core pretty much ALL LLM's are made to "predict" the information in answers, but they CAN actually avoid that and remain consistent when heavily constrained. The issue is that it isn't at the core level, so we have to CONSTANTLY retrain it over and over I find
Ace__•8mo ago
I have made something that addresses this. Not ready to share it yet, but soon-ish. At the moment it only works on GPT model 4o. I tried local Q4 KM's models, on LM Studio, but complete no go.

Show HN: Txt2plotter – True centerline vectors from Flux.2 for pen plotters

https://github.com/malvarezcastillo/txt2plotter
1•tsanummy•1m ago•0 comments

A good first word for Wordle

https://explainextended.com/2022/01/27/a-good-first-word-for-wordle/
1•7777777phil•2m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Sonar CiteScout – Find the links AI relies on to answer a prompt

https://trysonar.ai/tools/citescout
1•shukantpal•2m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Former Cloudflare SRE building a live map of what's running

2•kennethops•3m ago•1 comments

Flux.2 Klein 4B (Apache 2.0)

https://huggingface.co/black-forest-labs/FLUX.2-klein-4B
10•anjneymidha•4m ago•2 comments

What if the idea of the autism spectrum is completely wrong?

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2509117-what-if-the-idea-of-the-autism-spectrum-is-completel...
2•kristianp•4m ago•0 comments

Regressions on benchmark scores suggest frontier LLMs ~3-5T params

https://aimlbling-about.ninerealmlabs.com/blog/benchmarks-predict-model-size/
1•namnnumbr•5m ago•1 comments

Origami Programming [pdf]

https://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/people/jeremy.gibbons/publications/origami.pdf
1•andsoitis•6m ago•0 comments

Do AI models reason or regurgitate? Why AI is not merely a "stochastic parrot"

https://bigthink.com/the-present/do-ai-models-reason-or-regurgitate/
1•ryan_j_naughton•6m ago•0 comments

Package Manager Glossary

https://nesbitt.io/2026/01/13/package-manager-glossary.html
1•7777777phil•8m ago•0 comments

The industrial waste site that glitters like a glacier

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/kishangarh-dumping-yard-marble-india
1•noleary•8m ago•0 comments

Nanolang: A tiny experimental language designed to be targeted by coding LLMs

https://github.com/jordanhubbard/nanolang
2•Scramblejams•10m ago•0 comments

Minnesota wants to win a war of attrition

https://www.theverge.com/policy/863632/minnesota-walz-trump-sousveillance-ice
3•andrewstetsenko•13m ago•0 comments

Tesla, BYD, and Xiaomi Are Playing Different Games

https://gilpignol.substack.com/p/tesla-byd-and-xiaomi-are-playing
1•light_triad•14m ago•0 comments

Nebra Sky Disc: the oldest depiction of astronomical phenomena

https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/nebra-sky-disc-the-worlds-oldest-depiction-of-astronomica...
1•janandonly•14m ago•0 comments

I Improved Claude's MCP-CLI Experimental MCP Fix – 18x speedup on 50 calls

1•AIntelligentTec•16m ago•0 comments

Of donkeys, mules, and horses: data structures for network prefixes in Rust

https://blog.nlnetlabs.nl/donkeys-mules-horses/
1•fanf2•16m ago•0 comments

Gravity from Information Geometry: A Lean 4 Formalization of Emergent Spacetime

https://www.academia.edu/146192044/Gravity_from_Information_Geometry_A_Lean_4_Formalization_of_Em...
1•kristintynski•17m ago•1 comments

Software Is Fine

https://shomik.substack.com/p/software-is-fine
1•mooreds•18m ago•0 comments

Do not give up your brain

https://cassidoo.co/post/good-brain/
1•mooreds•18m ago•0 comments

Use Social Media Mindfully

https://danielleheberling.xyz/blog/mindful-social-media/
2•mooreds•18m ago•0 comments

Tell HN: Deskflow is getting spammed with AI-slop PRs

1•acheong08•18m ago•0 comments

Google Mandiant Delivers the Coup de Grâce to Microsoft's NTLM

https://www.heise.de/en/news/Windows-Networks-Google-Mandiant-Delivers-the-Coup-de-Grace-to-Micro...
2•croes•19m ago•0 comments

Apple's "Protect Mail Activity" Doesn't Work

https://www.grepular.com/Apples_Protect_Mail_Activity_Doesnt_Work
3•mike-cardwell•20m ago•0 comments

Targeted Bets: An alternative approach to the job hunt

https://www.seanmuirhead.com/blog/targeted-bets
1•seany62•22m ago•1 comments

Jazz – The Database That Syncs

https://jazz.tools/
1•aleksjess•23m ago•1 comments

Targeted Bets: An alternative approach to the job hunt

2•seany62•24m ago•0 comments

Nanotimetamps: Time-Stamped Data on Nano Block Lattice

https://github.com/SerJaimeLannister/nanotimestamp/wiki
2•Imustaskforhelp•25m ago•0 comments

Starlink users must opt out of all browsing data being used to train xAI models

https://twitter.com/cryps1s/status/2013345999826153943
6•pizza•25m ago•1 comments

Nobody knows how large software products work

https://www.seangoedecke.com/nobody-knows-how-software-products-work/
2•7777777phil•29m ago•0 comments