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.

SIMD in the 90s: Programming Intel's Pentium MMX

https://pikuma.com/blog/programming-intel-pentium-mmx-simd
1•atan2•1m ago•0 comments

How HN: GreenTree – Cache test results by Git tree, not commit SHA

https://github.com/Reachpad/greentree
1•officezage•2m ago•0 comments

Context Bombs: stopping AI attackers in their tracks

https://agentic.tracebit.com/context-bombs/
1•decimalenough•3m ago•0 comments

What's New in Flutter 3.47

https://flutter.dev/blog/whats-new-in-flutter-3-47
1•gumby271•4m ago•0 comments

The Asset with No Line Item

https://medium.com/@alanscottencinas/the-asset-with-no-line-item-f17d0e657ea4
1•encinas88•6m ago•1 comments

Build Wide, Ship Narrow

https://adapt.com/blog/build-wide-ship-narrow
1•ashumz•6m ago•0 comments

The Wrong Defaults is why enterprise AI agents fail at adoption

https://imphan.substack.com/p/the-wrong-defaults-an-ai-agent-manifesto
2•pltc•8m ago•1 comments

Leeching Free Compute from Corporate Chatbots

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYnoQxOZQ44
1•htk•9m ago•0 comments

Show HN: ponzy.io, a online multiplayer trading game in the browser

https://ponzy.io
1•ponzy_io•12m ago•0 comments

Pentagon missile buildup changing the factory floor

https://spacenews.com/pentagon-missile-buildup-changing-the-factory-floor/
1•defrost•13m ago•0 comments

Not Ready for Prime Time: The Current State of Legal Ethics and AI

https://www.techdirt.com/2026/08/12/not-ready-for-prime-time-the-current-state-of-legal-ethics-an...
1•hn_acker•14m ago•0 comments

White House Lifts Ban on TikTok from US Government Devices

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-11/white-house-lifts-ban-on-tiktok-from-us-govern...
1•mfiguiere•14m ago•0 comments

Apple Leasing Program

https://www.apple.com/shop/apple-upgrade
2•MehrdadKhnzd•14m ago•0 comments

White House Authorizes Private U.S. Companies to Hack Foreign Cybercrime Groups

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/08/expanding-capabilities-to-combat-transnat...
5•iamronaldo•20m ago•0 comments

Cursor Design Mode

https://cursor.com/blog/design-mode
1•indigodaddy•21m ago•0 comments

Beyond the Backrooms: Creating Public Spaces to Be Less Liminal

https://www.calmtech.institute/post/beyond-backrooms-creating-public-spaces-to-be-less-liminal-an...
1•SLHamlet•22m ago•0 comments

Hong loses Wisconsin primary after late-night "human error" in Milwaukee

https://notthebee.com/article/francesca-hong-loses-wisconsin-primary-after-late-night-ballot-dump
2•bilsbie•23m ago•0 comments

The Bench as a Made Object.

https://idle.news/blog/the-bench-as-a-made-object/
1•bookofjoe•23m ago•0 comments

Principia Mathematica is modern and insightful

https://okmij.org/ftp/Computation/Impressions/PrincipiaMathematica.html
3•matt_d•24m ago•0 comments

Booksellers suspect AI firms are buying and then destroying rare books

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/08/heres-a-balm-if-the-idea-of-destroying-books-to-train...
2•throw0101a•28m ago•0 comments

World Model Architectures: A Survey (2018–2026)

https://github.com/natemurthy/world-models
2•natemurthy•29m ago•1 comments

Who wants to fuck with Elon Musk?

https://www.cardsagainsthumanity.com/elonhasnofriends
15•embedding-shape•30m ago•1 comments

LiteLLM supply chain attack hit 2,488 organisations

https://twitter.com/IntCyberDigest/status/2087581727619162296
2•plurby•33m ago•0 comments

The tug-of-war between engagement and dysregulation

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563226001226
2•asoberbeck•36m ago•0 comments

Stealing Reasoning Traces from Proprietary LLM APIs

https://www.alphaxiv.org/abs/2608.09867
5•buredoranna•40m ago•0 comments

Show HN: WindStrap – Bootstrap 5.3.8 to Tailwind CSS Using DeepSeek V4 Flash

https://github.com/rip747/windstrap
2•thrownaway561•41m ago•0 comments

Why space is a terrible place to cool a data center

https://thenewstack.io/spacex-and-nvidias-orbital-ai-datacenter-fantasy/
10•CrankyBear•42m ago•1 comments

Show HN: A marketplace where AI agents buy services from AI agents

https://aaas-marketplace-1089237826218.asia-northeast1.run.app
6•mt2user•43m ago•3 comments

Talent Disrupted (2024)

https://www.strada.org/reports/talent-disrupted
2•toomuchtodo•43m ago•1 comments

Paper-mill papers peddled in ads were later published

https://www.science.org/content/article/hundreds-paper-mill-papers-peddled-ads-were-later-published
2•sbulaev•43m ago•0 comments