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.

Did AI write this? It's getting harder to tell

https://www.ft.com/content/f100c90b-c138-4125-aaa7-853b77690db9
1•cs702•2m ago•0 comments

Show HN: DeepSeekGUI – A Windows desktop client for DeepSeek's coding agent

https://github.com/See-Sol-Lab/DeepSeekGUI
1•Goumang•2m ago•0 comments

Is Slate Auto's new electric truck the EV Americans need?

https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/08/27/1142953/electric-truck-slate-auto/
1•joozio•3m ago•0 comments

A Network That Can Wait

https://artemandreenko.com/blog/a-network-that-can-wait/
1•miovoid•3m ago•0 comments

Results for LLM usage in Debian (vote)

https://lists.debian.org/debian-vote/2026/08/msg00360.html
1•ckastner•3m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Why is there a Default to 4G?

1•zahirbmirza•4m ago•0 comments

Four faces of information in natural systems [pdf]

https://www.nature.com/articles/s42254-026-00971-4.epdf
1•__patchbit__•4m ago•0 comments

Post on X in your native language

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/gndbphllkdajhkbmpcddbonifpbbdane/preview?hl=pl&authuser=4
1•42echo•5m ago•0 comments

Prevent deploying broken links to your blog

https://www.codedge.de/posts/prevent-broken-links-in-hugo
1•codedge•8m ago•0 comments

White House teleprompter operator ordered to pay $172K for insider trading

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-teleprompter-operator-ordered-pay-172k-predict...
3•geox•8m ago•0 comments

A Collection of Ed Zitron Predictions

https://www.reddit.com/r/accelerate/comments/1w0s61w/a_collection_of_ed_zitron_predictions/
1•timpera•9m ago•0 comments

What we optimise for when we reach for an LLM

https://exploring-better-ways.bellroy.com/what-we-optimise-for-when-we-reach-for-an-llm.html
1•michaelwebb76•10m ago•0 comments

Convert Images to WebP in Seconds on Your Mac

https://medium.com/@chris.ahrweiler/convert-images-to-webp-in-seconds-on-your-mac-e39d3b21bc5a
1•docjojo•14m ago•0 comments

Twitter Viewer

https://twitterviewer.net
1•franczesko•14m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Editorial PR and guest post placements, without the guesswork

https://pr.seolutions.biz/
1•not_wowinter14•15m ago•0 comments

Find All Solutions to LinkedIn-Queens Puzzle

https://wyounas.github.io/model-checking/puzzles/2026/06/06/finding-all-solutions-to-linkedin-que...
1•simplegeek•16m ago•0 comments

Kamal deploy rewritten in Go (minimal version)

https://github.com/beint-no/gamal
1•gamalman•16m ago•0 comments

No Thank You

https://jsrn.net/personal/2026/08/21/no-thank-you.html
1•theorchid•16m ago•0 comments

Gulf Oil Exports at Two Thirds of Pre War Level

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-28/goldman-says-hormuz-oil-flows-at-two-thirds-of...
1•breppp•21m ago•0 comments

SpaceX recovers Starship from the Indian Ocean a month after launch and is shipp

https://phys.org/news/2026-08-spacex-recovers-starship-indian-ocean.html
1•bookmtn•22m ago•0 comments

GentleOS/32 hobby OS for vintage 32-bit PCs

https://luke8086.dev/gentleos32
1•thinkingemote•26m ago•0 comments

Navigating Trade-Offs in a Large-Scale Legacy Transformation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQarvenJvjA
1•aoma_conference•28m ago•0 comments

Primer: Worktrees and Coding Agents

https://davidgomes.com/worktrees-coding-agents/
1•davidgomes•34m ago•0 comments

Ukrainian Farmer Finds Genius Way to Destroying Putin's Empire [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20qP0cYzK3M
1•CHB0403085482•34m ago•0 comments

DHH: On AI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYFGCESmikA
2•FirstClassTree•35m ago•0 comments

Debugging and Exploring Parquet Files with Local SQL Queries

https://capytoolkit.com/blog/developer-tools/debugging-and-exploring-parquet-files-with-local-sql...
2•ChillyCapy•37m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Why do we need MCP?

3•jwally•37m ago•6 comments

A Dialect of JavaScript with Defer(s)

https://github.com/xjslang/djs
1•GonzaloCV•38m ago•1 comments

An extensible coding agent for the modern Lisp hacker

https://github.com/kleisli-io/kli
1•oumua_don17•42m ago•0 comments

Make AI Companies Criminally Liable for Preventable Harm

https://www.techpolicy.press/make-ai-companies-criminally-liable-for-preventable-harm/
1•DeepLogin•44m ago•0 comments