frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

GPT needs a truth-first toggle for technical workflows

1•PAdvisory•5mo 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•5mo 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•5mo 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__•5mo 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.

The Aussie giving War and Peace a 'bogan' remake

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2lkjd2kmdo
1•1659447091•16s ago•0 comments

Nothing impossible happens

https://www.oxonianreview.com/articles/nothing-impossible-happens
1•hhs•9m ago•0 comments

What Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson Knows About Pain

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/21/magazine/dwayne-johnson-the-rock-smashing-machine.html
1•nsoonhui•10m ago•0 comments

The cost of protecting Oracle Corp.'s debt against default rose on Friday

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-11-14/oracle-credit-derivatives-jump-as-traders-rush...
1•zerosizedweasle•12m ago•0 comments

I wrote a Pong game in a 512-byte boot sector

https://akshatjoshi.com/i-wrote-a-pong-game-in-a-512-byte-boot-sector/
1•akshat666•12m ago•0 comments

Scam.security Wants Freelancer

1•Jaseymour•14m ago•0 comments

Show HN: A visual guide to learning Jujutsu (JJ)

https://excalidraw.com/#json=kMtNOJfH_UUOzBqt7WXx9,cyuXonQjb-Kor72f0F5YXg
2•anavid7•17m ago•0 comments

Code Wiki: Accelerating your code understanding

https://developers.googleblog.com/en/introducing-code-wiki-accelerating-your-code-understanding/
3•nh43215rgb•23m ago•0 comments

SlimBrowser: Fastest web browser for Windows that blocks all Ads

https://www.slimbrowser.net/
1•thunderbong•23m ago•0 comments

Student brags on social media about calling ICE on car wash workers

https://www.wbur.org/news/2025/11/13/student-ice-car-wash-social-bu-republicans
8•geox•29m ago•0 comments

Do you know how much the world outside a small group of people hate AI?

10•zerosizedweasle•30m ago•1 comments

I don't love Rust (either)

https://cbarrete.com/rust-bad.html
4•wakawaka28•31m ago•1 comments

Claude Code modernizes a legacy COBOL codebase [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwMu0pyYZBc
1•vinhnx•35m ago•0 comments

Urban Myth of 5-7-5

https://www.graceguts.com/essays/urban-myth-of-5-7-5
2•latexr•38m ago•0 comments

Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk would like to 'delete all IP law'

https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/13/jack-dorsey-and-elon-musk-would-like-to-delete-all-ip-law/
7•hhs•45m ago•3 comments

Andrew Ng's letter to an 18 y.o. worried about AI

https://www.deeplearning.ai/the-batch/dont-believe-the-hype/
3•siquick•47m ago•0 comments

The curious case of broken theorems

https://davidbessis.substack.com/p/the-curious-case-of-broken-theorems
2•mathgenius•48m ago•0 comments

A Small Linear Accelerator for Charged Microparticles

https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/15/21/11709
2•PaulHoule•51m ago•0 comments

AI Gateway from Pydantic

https://pydantic.dev/articles/gateway-open-beta
1•scolvin•52m ago•0 comments

Be Simple

https://corrode.dev/blog/simple/
1•vinhnx•53m ago•0 comments

Use buttons instead of text link in your outreach email

https://www.emailbuttons.com/
3•zackho•55m ago•1 comments

Heat engine uses the cold of space to run a fan (400mW per sqm)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VSmBl8Rv_o
2•gsf_emergency_4•56m ago•0 comments

Gaza Online – Esims for Gazans

https://www.gaza.online/
1•aussieguy1234•56m ago•0 comments

Differential Coding of Perception in the Languages

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1720419115
1•DrierCycle•59m ago•0 comments

Disney+ to Allow User-Generated Content via AI

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/disney-plus-gen-ai-user-generated-content-1236...
2•TMWNN•1h ago•1 comments

US announces 'Southern Spear' mission as forces deploy near South America

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/11/14/us-announces-southern-spear-mission-as-forces-deploy-to...
5•treetalker•1h ago•1 comments

Another Round of Tea Protocol Spam Floods NPM, but It's Not a Worm

https://socket.dev/blog/tea-protocol-spam-floods-npm-but-its-not-a-worm
1•feross•1h ago•0 comments

No Leak, No Problem – Bypassing ASLR with a ROP Chain to Gain RCE

https://modzero.com/en/blog/no-leak-no-problem/
4•todsacerdoti•1h ago•0 comments

The EU must uphold hard-won protections for digital human rights [pdf]

https://edri.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/The-EU-must-uphold-hard-won-protections-for-digital-h...
4•doener•1h ago•0 comments

Crushed by capitalism? There's a video game for that

https://www.ft.com/content/5b223e7a-3161-4f03-a577-557e9947618b
3•hhs•1h ago•0 comments