frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

GPT needs a truth-first toggle for technical workflows

1•PAdvisory•8mo 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•8mo 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•8mo 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__•8mo 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.

Bi-Directional Accountability: Leadership Without the Bullshit

https://medium.com/the-inconvenient-truth/bi-directional-accountability-the-leadership-shift-most...
1•lifeisstillgood•1m ago•0 comments

China hacked Downing Street phones for years

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/01/26/china-hacked-downing-street-phones-for-years/
1•isaacfrond•2m ago•0 comments

Lawsuit Alleges That WhatsApp Has No End-to-End Encryption

https://www.pcmag.com/news/lawsuit-alleges-that-whatsapp-has-no-end-to-end-encryption?test_uuid=0...
1•isaacfrond•3m ago•0 comments

Embracing sauna culture can lower dementia risk and boost brain health

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2512893-embracing-sauna-culture-can-lower-dementia-risk-and-...
2•kensai•7m ago•1 comments

EU and India sign landmark trade agreement

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2026/jan/27/european-union-india-trade-deal-ukraine-greenl...
2•Archelaos•7m ago•0 comments

Pandas 3 marks the most significant evolution of Pandas in over ten years

https://www.reddit.com/r/Python/s/oMldsGf0VP
1•datapythonista•11m ago•0 comments

Show HN: My attempt to visualize 'Market Timing' risk (Python/Chart.js)

1•codeandcapital•12m ago•0 comments

The Enclosure feedback loop: how LLMs sabotage by privatizing a public good

https://michiel.buddingh.eu/enclosure-feedback-loop
1•internet_points•15m ago•0 comments

High Performance LLM Inference Operator Library from Tencent

https://github.com/Tencent/hpc-ops
1•polyrand•15m ago•0 comments

Pavel Durov: "You'd have to be braindead to believe WhatsApp is secure in 2026"

https://twitter.com/durov/status/2015854422866469222
2•martinlaz•16m ago•0 comments

For Our Machine Friends

https://toasterdump.com/2026/01/18/for-our-machine-friends/
1•xxyxx•18m ago•0 comments

Blocking Claude

https://aphyr.com/posts/403-blocking-claude
1•Tomte•19m ago•0 comments

How to audit your LinkedIn profile

1•semihayat•21m ago•0 comments

Il dominio della narrazione, ovvero spegnere il cervello è bello

https://cinemanuele.substack.com/p/il-dominio-della-narrazione-ovvero
2•grouchoromano•23m ago•0 comments

Show HN: RustyBoard – The largest collection of active Rust jobs and analytics

https://rustyboard.com
1•louispog•26m ago•0 comments

Anti-pop and an alien sigil: how Aphex Twin overtook Taylor Swift

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2026/jan/27/aphex-twin-taylor-swift-soundtrack-to-gen-z-life-on...
3•quakeguy•28m ago•1 comments

The Complete SEO Guide for SaaS Startups in 2026

https://kitful.ai/blog/the-complete-seo-guide-for-saas-startups-in
1•eashish93•29m ago•0 comments

Digital non-Foster-inspired electronics for broadband impedance matching

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-48861-6
1•teleforce•29m ago•0 comments

Say no to linked lists as a "standard" data structure (2019)

https://rust-unofficial.github.io/too-many-lists/#an-obligatory-public-service-announcement
1•mefengl•32m ago•0 comments

mcelog: Logs and accounts machine checks on modern x86 Linux systems

https://www.mcelog.org/
1•teleforce•32m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Takes – A Daily Chess Solitaire Game

https://takes.labs.clevergoat.com
1•juannyp•37m ago•0 comments

You can't open 2 cameras with getUserMedia at same time on Android and iOS

https://tony-xlh.github.io/getUserMedia-multiple-camera/
1•julienreszka•40m ago•1 comments

GIC, Sequoia, Index purchase Notion shares in private tender offer

https://www.notion.com/blog/gic-sequoia-index-purchase-notion-shares
1•doppp•41m ago•0 comments

Clawdbot Is Now Moltbot

https://twitter.com/moltbot/status/2016058924403753024
2•chl•42m ago•0 comments

XAgent CLI – AI assistant that can control your mouse and keyboard

https://github.com/xAgent-AI/xagent
1•ouyangwenli•42m ago•1 comments

One Hundred Years of Television

https://diamondgeezer.blogspot.com/2026/01/tv100.html?m=1
1•beardyw•43m ago•0 comments

Show HN: DNS Monitor

https://monitordns.app/
1•rsc-dev•47m ago•0 comments

Software Pump and Dump

http://tautvilas.lt/software-pump-and-dump/
2•brisky•48m ago•0 comments

Two empty chairs: why "obvious" decisions keep breaking production

https://read.perspectiveship.com/p/perspective-taking
1•birdculture•49m ago•0 comments

Things got too easy with AI

https://gusarich.com/blog/things-got-too-easy
1•Gusarich•49m ago•0 comments