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.

Mom Is Working for Moloch

https://blog.exitgroup.us/p/mom-is-working-for-moloch
1•MrBuddyCasino•44s ago•0 comments

The phrase that ruins every eCommerce project: "Just connect it to our ERP."

https://shiftmag.dev/the-phrase-that-ruins-every-ecommerce-project-just-connect-it-to-our-erp-11689/
2•taubek•1m ago•0 comments

How to Attempt CBSE Sample Papers Like Real Board Exam Papers?

1•selfstudys•4m ago•0 comments

Signage Company in Dubai

https://www.ambert.ae/signage-board
1•doshopzone•5m ago•0 comments

Oakland Noticing Club

https://mailchi.mp/5513dde03f85/oakland-noticing-club
1•rdmuser•9m ago•0 comments

Nvidia links gaming PCs into a local AI cluster

https://forgeeks.net/nvidia-rtx-pair-local-ai-cluster/
2•kuuuzya•11m ago•0 comments

Sidekick's continual learning loop (2026) – Shopify

https://shopify.engineering/sidekicks-continual-learning-loop
1•porridgeraisin•12m ago•0 comments

PyCon AU conference happening: videos coming online

https://www.youtube.com/@PyConAU/videos
1•spwa4•14m ago•0 comments

Can We Stop with the Uptime Percentages?

https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2026/stop-with-the-uptime-percentage/
1•ingve•17m ago•0 comments

Clients are servers; all endpoints are created equal

https://docs.dhttp.net/en/docs/overview
1•Arya_xiaofan•19m ago•1 comments

Marin 32B Spike Fixing

https://wandb.ai/marin-community/marin/reports/Marin-32B-Spike-Fixing--VmlldzoxMzM1Mzk1NQ
2•Bluestein•20m ago•0 comments

Engineers grieve a job that no longer exists

https://leaddev.com/career-development/engineers-grieve-a-job-that-no-longer-exists
1•fsferrara•20m ago•2 comments

Reverse engineering the storage format for an undocumented database

https://blog.glazer.ee/posts/converting-cronos/
1•pintprint•21m ago•0 comments

Native Rust/C++ LLM inference engine

https://github.com/truespar/paddock
1•nylanderjens•21m ago•0 comments

Execution gating and micro-rollbacks for AI agents

https://bartholomew.info/
1•itsub_sa•23m ago•0 comments

FBI Probes Service Selling 153M+ Drivers Licenses

https://krebsonsecurity.com/
2•LostMyLogin•23m ago•0 comments

If the Universe Is a Hologram, This Long-Forgotten Math Could Decode It

https://www.quantamagazine.org/if-the-universe-is-a-hologram-this-long-forgotten-math-could-decod...
1•Bluestein•25m ago•0 comments

My GPT-6 Astra Review

https://somethingbig.ai/astra-review
1•mellosouls•27m ago•0 comments

With Astra, ChatGPT is nearly 2x faster at computer use

https://twitter.com/AriX/status/2095671700771762341
1•tosh•27m ago•1 comments

A Case Study on Emergent Cheating and Whistleblowing in Autonomous Research

https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.04170
1•sbulaev•31m ago•0 comments

Google engineer unplugged fiber and took down a chunk of the G-Cloud

https://www.theregister.com/off-prem/2026/09/04/google-engineer-unplugged-every-fiber-they-could-...
3•nonfamous•31m ago•0 comments

The Download: rethinking child safety and fossil-fueled farming

https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/09/03/1143385/the-download-rethinking-child-safety-online-f...
2•joozio•35m ago•0 comments

First open-source knowledge enterprise world model

https://github.com/deeplethe/utopia
2•andreabat•36m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: How has AI changed your QA validation workflows?

1•Austin_Conlon•38m ago•2 comments

Is It Even Possible to Understand Quantum Mechanics?

https://www.wired.com/story/is-it-even-possible-to-understand-quantum-mechanics/
1•beardyw•39m ago•1 comments

OpenAI commits $1B to critical-infrastructure AI initiative

https://axios.com/2026/09/03/openai-critical-infrastructure-cyber-ai-models
2•utiiiD•43m ago•0 comments

Open-weight AI agents can use 10k× more energy than simple queries

https://bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-09-03/ai-s-environmental-impact-per-task-balloons-with-m...
1•utiiiD•44m ago•0 comments

An audio end-of-turn gate before LLM invocation in a local voice-agent pipeline

https://www.reddit.com/r/LLMDevs/comments/1w6w7cu/i_added_an_audio_endofturn_gate_before_llm/
3•aufklarer•44m ago•0 comments

Tunisia swelters as power cuts disrupt water supplies

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/8/31/tunisia-swelters-as-power-cuts-disrupt-water-supplies
1•littlexsparkee•46m ago•0 comments

Marin 535B-A23B

https://openathena.ai/blog/marin-535b-launch-note/
2•tosh•49m ago•0 comments