frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

GPT needs a truth-first toggle for technical workflows

1•PAdvisory•11mo 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•11mo 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•11mo 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__•11mo 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: Nanorust – Minimal server-driven UI in Rust

https://github.com/skorotkiewicz/nanorust
1•modinfo•15m ago•0 comments

The Cursed Computer Iceberg Meme (2021)

https://suricrasia.online/iceberg/
1•medbar•16m ago•0 comments

Hard Drive Smart Stats and Failure Rates

https://www.backblaze.com/docs/cloud-storage-hard-drive-smart-stats-and-failure-rates
1•mmh0000•17m ago•0 comments

Cyberattack hits Canvas system used by schools as finals loom

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/05/08/cyberattack-hits-canvas-system-used-by-thousands-of-scho...
2•1vuio0pswjnm7•19m ago•0 comments

Apple, Intel Have Reached Preliminary Chip-Making Agreement

https://www.wsj.com/tech/apple-intel-have-reached-preliminary-chip-making-agreement-69eb9370
1•tosh•23m ago•0 comments

Canvas outage delays college finals across the country

https://www.axios.com/2026/05/08/canvas-cyberattack-outage-finals-colleges-universities
1•1vuio0pswjnm7•24m ago•0 comments

California tech company Cloudflare to lay off more than 1k workers, cites AI

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2026-05-07/california-tech-company-cloudflare-to-lay-off-m...
1•1vuio0pswjnm7•27m ago•0 comments

What do figureheads on ships represent?

https://thedockyard.co.uk/news/what-do-figureheads-on-ships-represent/
1•thunderbong•33m ago•0 comments

What is Amazon Linux 2023?

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/linux/al2023/ug/what-is-amazon-linux.html
1•tosh•33m ago•0 comments

Programming as Theory Building [pdf]

https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/Naur.pdf
1•nvader•40m ago•1 comments

Rough Week Thank God for Fridays

3•Eaglo•41m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Best Old School UFO Website

http://www.ufoevidence.org/
2•techteach00•53m ago•0 comments

Show HN: CopyProps – A Figma plugin that copies element properties as text

https://github.com/p32929/figma_copy_props
1•heliskyr2•55m ago•0 comments

GNUtrition 0.33.0rc1 Now Available

https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/info-gnutrition/2026-05/msg00000.html
1•amcclure•58m ago•0 comments

The React2Shell Story and What Happened Next.js

https://sylvie.fyi/posts/react2shell/
1•thaunatos•1h ago•1 comments

ExitFlare

https://exitflare.com/
5•libroot•1h ago•0 comments

Learn Something Old Every Day, Part XXI: VGA Memory Access Is Complicated

https://www.os2museum.com/wp/learn-something-old-every-day-part-xxi-vga-memory-access-is-complica...
2•kencausey•1h ago•0 comments

Show HN: Ovlt – Lightweight Auth Server That Runs in ~20MB RAM

https://www.ovlt.tech/
2•Shrpp•1h ago•1 comments

How to Brush Your Teeth at Work

https://joshlf.com/posts/brush-your-teeth/
2•untrust•1h ago•0 comments

Over 97% of the 'Linux' Foundation's Budget Goes Not to Linux

https://techrights.org/n/2026/05/08/Over_97_of_the_Linux_Foundation_s_Budget_Goes_Not_to_Linux.shtml
29•esaym•1h ago•15 comments

Crab Memes Amplify Mistaken Ideas about Evolution

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/crab-memes-amplify-mistaken-ideas-about-evolution/
1•Eridanus2•1h ago•1 comments

Show HN: TigerJSON – Native macOS JSON viewer with jq filter engine ($9.99)

https://apps.apple.com/kr/app/tiger-json/id6761610376?mt=12
1•oxchairman•1h ago•0 comments

Scott Sumner Q1 movie reviews

https://scottsumner.substack.com/p/films-of-2026-q1
1•paulpauper•1h ago•0 comments

Annualizing Retention Rates

https://www.arrguide.com/blog/annualizing-retention-rates
1•ericsd2024•1h ago•0 comments

The Gell-Mann Amnesia Trap

https://novehiclesinthepark.substack.com/p/the-gell-mann-amnesia-trap
3•axtro•1h ago•0 comments

Meltdown: LLM Client Made in Python and Tk

https://github.com/Merkoba/Meltdown
2•madprops•1h ago•0 comments

ShowHN: Applying PEFT (e.g., LoRA) for edge-cloud collaborative computing

https://github.com/ShadowLLM/shadow-peft
5•heyjude87•1h ago•0 comments

A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro

https://gowers.wordpress.com/2026/05/08/a-recent-experience-with-chatgpt-5-5-pro/
3•_alternator_•1h ago•0 comments

Great Writers "Tell" All the Time

https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/great-writers-tell-all-the-time
3•paulpauper•2h ago•0 comments

Show HN: Ant – A from-scratch JavaScript runtime in 9 MB

https://github.com/themackabu/ant
5•theMackabu•2h ago•0 comments