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.

What Happens When You Lock Claude in a macOS Sandbox

https://holtwick.de/blog/bx
1•ingve•1m ago•0 comments

A Century-Old Physics Puzzle Solved: The Arrow of Time

1•luckyl•1m ago•1 comments

Plaintext todo lists from tree structures

https://jatabag.com/
1•solaire_oa•4m ago•0 comments

Performance Foundations of Parallel and Distributed Reasoning Language Models

https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.27046
1•matt_d•11m ago•0 comments

Sauron: A free and open source terminal development environment

https://github.com/mlolson/sauron/
1•LordHumungous•14m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Auto-Rig Web – Zero-click 3D humanoid rigging in a Web Worker

https://github.com/nff747/auto-rig-web
2•nff747•15m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Is September 8th AGI Day?

2•rvz•16m ago•1 comments

Canvas Browser

https://canvas-browser.com
1•bookofjoe•17m ago•0 comments

LG TV shown scanning LAN for third-party phones and other devices

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/09/lg-tv-shown-capable-of-tracking-user-activity-even-when-o...
6•Bender•21m ago•0 comments

Show HN: I found a weird old startup's LaserDisc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXOoyxisEMg
1•markchristian•21m ago•0 comments

Q&A with Mark Zuckerberg on Muse, the data center backlash

https://sources.news/p/mark-zuckerberg-meta-muse-ai-podcast-interview
1•utiiiD•22m ago•0 comments

EXtreme Go Horse (XGH) Process

http://brunomb.com/xgh/
1•variety8675•23m ago•0 comments

Colliding the Sum Checksum (2019)

https://mcpherrin.ca/2019/11/23/sum-collisions.html
1•mooreds•23m ago•0 comments

What nobody tells you about writing agent skills

https://newsletter.posthog.com/p/what-nobody-tells-you-about-writing
2•AntonZ234•24m ago•0 comments

How to manage a growing fleet of AI agents with Latitude

https://latitude.so/blog/how-to-manage-a-fleet-of-agents-with-latitude
2•mooreds•24m ago•0 comments

The Lottery of Life

https://substack.com/@rutgerbregman/note/c-332235472
1•higginsniggins•25m ago•0 comments

MCP Client Registration: Dinner Party or Nightclub?

https://fusionauth.io/blog/cimd-vs-dcr
1•mooreds•27m ago•0 comments

Hacking Cable: AI in post-exploitation operations

https://palisaderesearch.org/blog/hacking-cable
1•syumei•28m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Spatial memory for document OCR pipelines (zero dependencies)

https://github.com/aws-samples/sample-textract-field-memory
1•avnban•30m ago•0 comments

Stop making swap partitions–use swap files instead

https://gist.github.com/joshenders/c4960cec9c63a7b7d68ffa9543356c43
1•jenders•31m ago•1 comments

The Solo-Dev Ship Checklist – a 10-item pre-launch checklist for indie devs

https://merlin-ship-checklist.surge.sh
2•clawforger_mthx•31m ago•0 comments

Solo.io Pushes Agentic AI Governance to the Desktop: Open-Source Agentdesktop

https://techstrong.ai/articles/solo-io-pushes-agentic-ai-governance-to-the-desktop-with-open-sour...
1•CrankyBear•31m ago•0 comments

Running agents in a sandbox or VM is the wrong pattern

https://funky.dev/blog/running-agents-in-a-sandbox-or-vm-is-the-wrong-pattern
3•xij•32m ago•0 comments

Despite the chatter, AI pricing is not converging on a model

https://www.solvimon.com/blog/ai-pricing-not-converging-on-single-model
1•arnon•33m ago•0 comments

Refeeding Syndrome

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refeeding_syndrome
2•chistev•34m ago•0 comments

Show HN: An interactive visualization of Caribbean imperial history

https://contestedworlds.com/
1•jamesgpearce•34m ago•0 comments

Open Models Change the Economics of AI [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rY0wnfFHYbs
2•gmays•35m ago•0 comments

A Topological Picture Book, Rendered

https://e-infinity.space/picture-book/
3•mathgenius•36m ago•0 comments

How I Built First-Party Analytics for a Personal Blog

https://gkoreli.com/first-party-analytics-for-a-personal-blog
1•gogakoreli•39m ago•0 comments

The DOJ's AI Fair Use Brief Is Correct, but from a DOJ That Has No Credibility

https://www.techdirt.com/2026/09/08/the-dojs-ai-fair-use-brief-is-correct-but-from-a-doj-that-has...
2•hn_acker•41m ago•0 comments