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.

Ideas for Startups

https://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html
1•guiltyf•3m ago•1 comments

Anthropic Faces Questions over AI Export Ban Influence

https://fivetakes.news/did-anthropic-talk-its-way-into-an-ai-export-ban
1•mmeirovich•4m ago•0 comments

Maco – Let your agent rg a filesystem of MCP tools and run them as code

https://github.com/jingkaihe/maco
1•jingkai_he•8m ago•0 comments

Open Ralph Wiggum – Autonomous Agentic Loop

https://github.com/Th0rgal/open-ralph-wiggum
1•tomaskafka•9m ago•0 comments

Agentic Systems Course: Learn AI Agents with an AI Coding Agent

https://github.com/bryanyzhu/agentic-ai-system-course
1•lum1104•10m ago•0 comments

I built a real-time trading platform with an AI; then the clock started lying

https://faridsaid.com/en/blog/event-loop-starvation-trading.html
1•fawraw•19m ago•0 comments

AI Finance Advice Comes with a Warning Label

https://fivetakes.news/using-ai-for-financial-advice-proceed-with-caution
1•mmeirovich•21m ago•0 comments

Selling my multi-tenant dental SaaS codebase (Vue/Node/PostgreSQL)

https://dentaldesk.al
1•kejdixci•21m ago•0 comments

Automation and Repression [pdf]

https://economics.mit.edu/sites/default/files/2026-06/Automation%20and%20Repression.pdf
1•myyke•21m ago•0 comments

Google Hits 50% IPv6

https://blog.apnic.net/2026/04/28/google-hits-50-ipv6/
2•barqawiz•23m ago•0 comments

Unexpected behavior in TV audio dynamics

https://github.com/AdBusterOfficial/Adbuster--WinApp
1•Bo_Amigo_910•24m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Core Rankings for DBLP Profiles

https://pubtier.com/
1•otrack•26m ago•0 comments

United Postal Union's DNS Security Forum 2026

https://www.upu.int/en/events/dns-security-forum-2026
1•usernomdeguerre•27m ago•1 comments

The Expressive Power of Programming Languages (2019)

https://pwlconf.org/2019/shriram-krishnamurthi/
1•downbad_•27m ago•0 comments

Beast: Inference Economy Inversion in Agentic Coding Systems

https://github.com/Byron2306/EdgeK-BEAST
1•Byron230686•33m ago•0 comments

A 3D voxel game engine written in APL

https://github.com/namgyaaal/avoxelgame
18•sph•39m ago•3 comments

Kuksa – Crafting the traditional wooden cup

https://finlandnaturally.com/finnish-culture-food-heritage/kuksa-crafting-the-traditional-wooden-...
2•stevekemp•39m ago•0 comments

Luigi Cadorna Was the Worst (2021)

https://acoup.blog/2021/10/08/collections-luigi-cadorna-was-the-worst/
1•Tomte•42m ago•0 comments

Governing AI-agent actions via a network intent layer (NILScript)

https://zenodo.org/records/20774491
1•bashierkh•45m ago•0 comments

V131 Silicon Photonic Chip: Topological Manifold Processor, BER=0, 80ch DWDM

https://milkyway.center/
1•yuanjimaster•47m ago•0 comments

Query with Curl

https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2026/06/21/query-with-curl/
1•enz•47m ago•0 comments

How Do Solar Panels Work?

https://perthirtysix.com/how-the-heck-do-solar-panels-work
1•vinhnx•47m ago•0 comments

Tab Groups Actually Increase Tab Hoarding

https://gopeek-lovat.vercel.app/blog-tab-groups-sweeping-dirt.html
2•sheelagay•49m ago•0 comments

Indian Households Now Hold Four Times More Gold Than U.S. Official Reserves

https://en.baaghitv.com/indian-households-now-hold-four-times-more-gold-than-u-s-official-reserves
2•thunderbong•51m ago•1 comments

Show HN: MapDex – A Social Map for Travelers

1•ChunchyMoney•55m ago•0 comments

The Scoundrel Who Steals Fruit and Apologizes Insincerely Is Having a Bad Day

https://medium.com/luminasticity/the-scoundrel-who-steals-fruit-and-apologizes-insincerely-is-hav...
1•bryanrasmussen•55m ago•0 comments

Agent-trace: A standard format for tracing AI-generated code

https://github.com/cursor/agent-trace
1•Garbage•56m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Favorite Aspects of Cocoa/NeXTSTEP?

2•elcritch•57m ago•0 comments

I made an Time-Based AI coding agent

1•david3289•1h ago•1 comments

Ask HN: What are your favourite Hacker News comments?

1•Imustaskforhelp•1h ago•0 comments