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.

The Verifier Tax: Safety–Success Tradeoffs in Tool-Using LLM Agents

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3786335.3813160
1•tanmaysah•39s ago•0 comments

Show HN: AgentPace – Forecast when your coding agent usage will run out

https://festudio.net/agentpace/
1•jrflo•1m ago•0 comments

Social media is awful but the UK under-16 ban won't solve anything

https://www.pcgamer.com/software/platforms/social-media-is-awful-but-the-uk-under-16-ban-wont-sol...
1•evo_9•1m ago•0 comments

Facing reality, Apple or EU, is a core requirement for good management (2024)

https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2024/facing-reality-in-the-eu-and-tech/
1•davidgerard•1m ago•0 comments

Show HN: WhatsApp Clone, but Decentralized with P2P Messaging

https://enkrypted.chat
1•Screen8774•2m ago•0 comments

Show HN: The Dictionary Game (Fictionary/Balderdash) as a Daily Puzzle

https://dictionarypuzzle.com/
2•woutervd•3m ago•0 comments

A Tale of Two Browsers

https://adactio.com/journal/22609
1•robin_reala•3m ago•0 comments

PR Preview – Generate before/after videos for front end pull requests

https://www.pr-preview.com
1•VladNiculescu•3m ago•0 comments

Bandcamp explorer: RSS feed for every Bandcamp genre/tag and every artist

https://bandcamp.k47.cz/
1•ggrelet•3m ago•0 comments

Onhand: An AI tutor that lives on the page you're reading

https://useonhand.com/
1•phineas1500•4m ago•1 comments

Statistics of a Distribution on Unitary Matrices

https://mathoverflow.net/questions/512341/statistics-of-a-distribution-on-unitary-matrices
1•jjgreen•4m ago•0 comments

Cursor to Join SpaceX

https://xcancel.com/cursor_ai/status/2066875698346954891
2•SpyCoder77•4m ago•0 comments

Show HN: MockNest Serverless – Bedrock-Assisted API Mocks on AWS Lambda

https://github.com/elenavanengelenmaslova/mocknest-serverless
1•elenavanengelen•5m ago•1 comments

French domestic spy agency ditches Palantir for local rival, PM says

https://www.rappler.com/technology/french-dgsi-spy-agency-ditches-palantir-rival-chapsvision/
2•vidalee•6m ago•0 comments

SpaceX to Acquire Cursor

https://xcancel.com/SpaceX/status/2066873915717136548
1•SpyCoder77•6m ago•0 comments

Full 3D Mars optimization in 26 pages of Fortran

https://temporalmechanics.org/
1•BTUBill•6m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Cron-naturally – plain English to cron and back, in the browser

https://github.com/rillsai/cron-naturally
1•Stezu•8m ago•1 comments

How Open Source Projects Change Hands

https://nesbitt.io/2026/06/16/how-open-source-projects-change-hands.html
1•chmaynard•9m ago•0 comments

Firefox Roadmap

https://www.firefox.com/en-US/whatsnext/
2•pentagrama•9m ago•0 comments

Show HN: dbconform – stateless schema drift repair, no migration history

1•Datahenge•10m ago•0 comments

Show HN: 1Password-Style Quick Access for Proton Pass on macOS

https://github.com/CiTroNaK/Quick-Access-for-Pass
2•citronak•11m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Satd – a Bitcoin full node in Rust

https://github.com/epochbtc/satd
1•epochbtc•12m ago•0 comments

Infinite Context Paging Engine – Zero-copy LLM context paging in Rust ~419.34 µs

https://github.com/matheusdelgado/infinite-context
1•matheusdelgs•12m ago•0 comments

I made the same AI compete against itself in SEO tasks

https://medium.com/@a.galecki/i-made-the-same-ai-compete-against-itself-in-seo-tasks-9f973a3ee97c
1•NodesHub•13m ago•0 comments

Google Chrome update will close the door on ad blockers

https://9to5google.com/2026/06/15/google-chromes-next-update-will-mark-the-end-of-popular-ad-bloc...
2•speckx•13m ago•0 comments

Designing Software for Software Factories

https://blog.sshh.io/p/designing-software-for-software-factories
1•surprisetalk•14m ago•0 comments

Show HN: A site for generating AI videos with Seedance 2.0 Mini

https://seedance2-mini.com/
1•Evanmo666•15m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: How do you think AI comment moderation should work?

2•linmer•15m ago•1 comments

Why you got that ad, in plain text

https://vishsubramanian.me/why-you-got-that-ad-in-plaintext/
1•ingvay7•17m ago•0 comments

Context Monorepos

https://backnotprop.com/blog/context-monorepos/
2•ramoz•17m ago•0 comments