frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

GPT needs a truth-first toggle for technical workflows

1•PAdvisory•1y 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•1y 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•1y 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__•1y 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.

China's Nuclear Tests

https://www.swp-berlin.org/en/publication/chinas-secret-nuclear-tests
1•CGMthrowaway•10s ago•0 comments

The Salvation of Susan Pevensie

https://dougwils.com/books-and-culture/the-salvation-of-susan-pevensie.html
1•barry-cotter•2m ago•0 comments

Getting a subroutine right: a case study [pdf]

https://cr.yp.to/talks/2026.10.15/slides-djb-20261015-sorting-4x3.pdf
1•matt_d•4m ago•0 comments

Redis now has compressed bitmaps (Roaring)

https://lemire.me/blog/2026/10/15/redis-now-has-compressed-bitmaps-roaring/
1•smilelamp•5m ago•0 comments

ChatGPT can peek at your Chrome tabs now

https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/1012510/openai-chatgpt-google-chrome-tabs
1•mikelgan•6m ago•0 comments

Hackers hijack D-Link, Ubiquiti devices to resell your stolen bandwidth

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/hackers-hijack-d-link-ubiquiti-devices-to-resell-y...
1•wondersky•7m ago•0 comments

AA-Robotics v0.1

https://artificialanalysis.ai/articles/aa-robotics
2•liamswayne•7m ago•0 comments

My journey with AI induced mania in embedded computer graphics engineering [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ig2gYmOTuug
1•i2pi•10m ago•2 comments

68k Macintosh Ports

https://roytinker.com/68k-ports/
1•TimTheTinker•11m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Luksmith – Mount LUKS Ext4 Drives Natively in Finder on Apple Silicon

https://luksmith.app
2•baytizzel•14m ago•0 comments

Netflix Layoffs and A16Z layoffs are they signs for something?

2•dzonga•14m ago•0 comments

SK Hynix Unveils Next-Generation Memory Roadmap to Address AI Bottlenecks

https://www.koreaittimes.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=158124
2•peter_d_sherman•15m ago•0 comments

Linus Torvalds is using AI to develop Linux kernel code now

https://www.zdnet.com/innovation/linus-torvalds-uses-ai-to-write-linux-kernel-patch/
3•RickJWagner•18m ago•1 comments

Why your health insurance is dropping GLP-1 coverage

https://www.vox.com/good-medicine-newsletter/506555/glp-1-wegovy-zepbound-cost-health-insurance
2•ggm•18m ago•0 comments

Show HN: AlwaysGreen – uptime monitoring and status page

https://alwaysgreen.tech/
2•mikewww•23m ago•0 comments

Agent personas > agent objectives: case study with multiagent benchmark tool

https://jonathanwmaddison.github.io/loombench/
1•maddmann•23m ago•0 comments

PlayerPro: Open-source Mac OS 9 music tracker ported to the web

https://www.empireofslop.com/playerpro/
1•swivelmaster•24m ago•0 comments

Palm OS Developer Archive

https://github.com/ardiri/dev-palmos
1•sohkamyung•24m ago•0 comments

What It Took

https://bahaaldine.com/articles/eleven-years-in-a-calendar/
1•bahaazarmi•26m ago•0 comments

October 15, 2026: The world has decided to get rid of leap seconds

https://www.timeanddate.com/news/astronomy/no-more-leap-seconds-utc-2026
2•chungus•30m ago•0 comments

The Sun Never Sets on the Ant Empire

https://sqonline.ucsd.edu/2019/05/the-sun-never-sets-on-the-ant-empire/
3•dkgs•30m ago•0 comments

Show HN: TRON-069 – mapping the Internet's last-mile management infrastructure

https://scadastrangelove.github.io/TRON-069/
2•scadaSL•31m ago•0 comments

Show HN: eqMini – Open-source macOS equalizer with per-app controls

https://github.com/elmsec/eqmini
1•elmsec•31m ago•0 comments

Forgejo v17.0 Is Available

https://forgejo.org/2026-10-release-v17-0/
2•wondersky•33m ago•0 comments

Putin Admits Moscow Failed to Anticipate Ukrainian Strikes on E-Commerce Hubs

https://united24media.com/war-in-ukraine/putin-admits-moscow-failed-to-anticipate-ukrainian-strik...
1•nsdfg•36m ago•0 comments

Remote Attestation Should Not Be Tolerated

https://lumi.codeberg.page/blog/remote-attestation.html
4•birdculture•36m ago•3 comments

We're not ready for superpersistent AI

https://www.natesilver.net/p/were-not-ready-for-superpersistent
1•gwintrob•36m ago•0 comments

Russia Wants FSB Encryption Built into Every 5G Smartphone

https://united24media.com/world/russia-wants-fsb-encryption-built-into-every-5g-smartphone-from-i...
3•nsdfg•38m ago•0 comments

Git include: a Git-subrepo-compatible plugin for nested and vendored repos

https://github.com/Flova/git-include
1•flova•40m ago•1 comments

Will AI soon lead to double-digit growth?

https://aleximas.substack.com/p/will-ai-soon-lead-to-double-digit
3•gwintrob•42m ago•0 comments