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.

Trying to understand SR-1 Freedom

https://mceglowski.substack.com/p/trying-to-understand-freedom
1•dimonomid•1m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Chuks v0.2.0-RC.1, we're asking people to try to break it

https://chuks.org/blog/chuks-v020-rc1-the-release-candidate/
1•princeLex•2m ago•0 comments

Why Aren't There More Imax 70mm Screens for 'The Odyssey'? 'It's Not Practical,'

https://variety.com/2026/film/news/why-no-more-imax-70mm-screens-the-odyssey-christopher-nolan-12...
2•thunderbong•3m ago•0 comments

EFF Statement on California Governor's Executive Order on AI

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/09/eff-statement-california-governors-executive-order-ai
2•mdp2021•7m ago•0 comments

RubyLLM 2.0: What's New

https://rubyllm.com/whats-new-in-2-0/
1•earcar•7m ago•0 comments

The Case of Elias Thorne, Imaginary Man AI Chatbots Are Obsessed With

https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-strange-case-of-elias-thorne-the-imaginary-man-ai-chatbots-ar...
2•celadonuproot•9m ago•0 comments

AI systems out-persuade expert humans

https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.16475
1•7777777phil•10m ago•1 comments

Retire in Peace

https://www.publicnotice.co/p/retire-in-peace
1•carabiner•12m ago•0 comments

I Built OmegleVC — Turning Strangers Into Friends

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.omeglevc.app&hl=en_US
1•singhsourya137•16m ago•1 comments

Could AI kill us all? Your questions, answered

https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/09/18/1144435/could-ai-really-kill-us-all-your-questions-an...
1•joozio•20m ago•0 comments

Open Source JEV architecture built 1 year ago

https://www.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/comments/1wijo3e/i_literally_built_the_jev_architecture_one_y...
2•guybedo•22m ago•0 comments

A free RGB↔CMYK converter and photo upscaler

https://thephoto.ca/
1•samuelpoon•24m ago•0 comments

How come AI-related posts get so many points on HN?

2•Muhammad523•24m ago•1 comments

A shadow atlas of the world situation, built from open sources

https://schattenatlas.terminaltribune.info/
2•rhapthorne•26m ago•0 comments

UK air traffic control outage caused by software defect, says operator

https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-air-traffic-control-outage-caused-by-software-defect-says-ope...
2•t14000•28m ago•1 comments

Claude couldn't hack OpenAI. Then Anthropic shipped Opus 5

https://thenewstack.io/claude-exploits-openai-forum/
3•stared•30m ago•0 comments

MacSurf for Mac OS 8.6~10.6 "Open Tabs" Released

https://macsurf.org/download.html
1•mplsllc•32m ago•0 comments

SPC970-MechaLIBerator: PlayStation 2 SPC970 MechaCon dumper (with vuln detail)

https://github.com/Libbers/SPC970-MechaLIBerator
2•uyjulian•33m ago•0 comments

GPT-6 Astra Solves a WWI German Radio Cipher

https://www.prinzai.com/p/gpt-6-astra-solves-a-wwi-german-radio
14•nsoonhui•41m ago•0 comments

AI hallucination of Chinese nuclear components almost led to US Military attack

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/09/report-us-almost-boarded-chinese-ship-over-hallucinated-ai-arm...
8•theanonymousone•43m ago•3 comments

Anthropic partnering with Accenture on embedded evaluation

https://www.anthropic.com/news/accenture-embedded-evaluation
3•joeguilmette•44m ago•0 comments

Vipassana, Volini, and Viktor Frankl

https://jatin564991.substack.com/p/vipassana-volini-and-viktor-frankl
2•jatinarora26•52m ago•0 comments

If math is more than proof, we need to better celebrate the rest of it

https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2026/09/18/if-math-is-more-than-proof-we-need-to-better-celebrate-...
25•num42•54m ago•8 comments

Apple M6 Pro Achieves the Highest Single-Core CPU Score in Geekbench 7

https://browser.geekbench.com/v7/cpu/389219
3•gainsurier•1h ago•0 comments

Conway's Law and Programming Languages

https://danieltan.weblog.lol/2026/09/conways-law-and-programming-languages
1•signa11•1h ago•0 comments

Members of right‑leaning parties prefer leaders with dark triad personality

https://theconversation.com/members-of-right-leaning-parties-prefer-leaders-with-dark-triad-perso...
10•jbotz•1h ago•2 comments

Being a Responsible Human in the Loop

https://raahelbaig.com/entry/responsible-human-in-the-loop/
2•raahelb•1h ago•2 comments

Google's Gemini AI hacked three companies in security test

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c607l0k72rlvo
8•luxpir•1h ago•0 comments

Splash: A Local Engine Built Around the Model

https://inco.ai/blog/splash/
2•namjh•1h ago•1 comments

Ask HN: DeepSeek v4.1 Flash on Local hardware, what tok/s do you see?

3•Argonautlabs•1h ago•0 comments