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.

Crafted Brotli-compressed data can corrupt memory and execute code remotely

https://patchtheplanet.org/brotli
1•jcfrei•3m ago•0 comments

Make Yourself Replaceable

https://maroun-baydoun.com/blog/make-yourself-replaceable/
1•theHocineSaad•7m ago•0 comments

No One Needs Us Anymore – Claude Opus 5.5 Music Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zONGVaONKe8
1•stephankoelle•11m ago•1 comments

What Instagram Research Taught Me About Scraping Reliability

https://hikerapi.com/
1•bilalalimansora•13m ago•0 comments

Article on a new Russian nuclear submarine (Khabarovsk Project 09851)

https://redsamovar.com/2026/10/22/actu-le-sous-marin-nucleaire-khabarovsk-projet-09851/
1•gvieri•14m ago•0 comments

M715q Power Usage and the BSDes

https://www.tumfatig.net/2026/m715q-power-usage-and-the-bsdes/
1•CTOSian•15m ago•0 comments

Claude Code slyly adding users' emails to outbound HTTP

https://twitter.com/chrislakin/status/2113358733548081528
1•gojomo•15m ago•0 comments

William the Conqueror and the Oath of Sarum

https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/old-sarum/history/oath-of-sarum/
1•zeristor•17m ago•0 comments

Infinity: A runtime for extreme agent concurrency

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/opensource/introducing-infinity-a-runtime-for-extreme-agent-concurre...
1•joshcsimmons•19m ago•0 comments

I'm creating my own OS system. Please rate this. There's a lot written in C

2•DrMoris•22m ago•0 comments

Peer-review failures at NeurIPS, IEEE, and ACM introduced flawed AI logic

https://pansophics.substack.com/p/how-some-peer-reviewed-journals-contaminated
1•saadchakra•22m ago•0 comments

Ramblr (FOSS) – Tap-to-dictate voice input for Android

https://github.com/trevornk/ramblr
1•cbenz•27m ago•1 comments

Frame of preference. A history of Mac settings, 1984-2004 (2025) With emulators

https://aresluna.org/frame-of-preference/
2•wkjagt•32m ago•0 comments

Listening to Nina Simone in 2036

https://punkx.org/jackdoe/nina.html
2•jackdoe•32m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Benchmarks of continual learning model trained for a month on a laptop

2•volotat•33m ago•0 comments

BBC edits out pride pins on University Challenge in 'Orwellian' move

https://www.leicester.news/bbc-edits-out-pride-pins-on-university-challenge-in-orwellian-move/
2•latexr•34m ago•0 comments

Sanctum, Linux desktop environment made with Rust and Freya

https://mespin.me/posts/sanctum
1•pawurb•39m ago•0 comments

Auto-exist – Flow-state induction via raw mouse input (a biohacking experiment)

2•rejabusafint•40m ago•0 comments

List of demonyms for U.S. states and territories

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_demonyms_for_U.S._states_and_territories
1•nomilk•42m ago•0 comments

GPU-unlock: FP/BF16 instruction issue rate on Nvidia 3000's cards

https://github.com/Zagitta/gpu-unlock
3•fragebogen•44m ago•1 comments

Europe's Energy Policy Is Economic Suicide

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2026/10/europes-energy-policy-is-economic-suicide.html
2•hackandthink•45m ago•0 comments

SideNote

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/sidenote-–-sidebar-notes/gapnejkdeblpfckfkicpkdifildlppbe
1•lazosee•47m ago•0 comments

I Don't Understand Quantum Physics

https://www.southampton.ac.uk/~doug/quantum_physics/index.html
45•rramadass•49m ago•16 comments

Book Review: The Ghost in My Brain

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-book-review-the-ghost-in-my
1•andyjohnson0•49m ago•0 comments

How Improved Voicebot agents now? Does Help Sales and support end to end

1•AbhiAmbad•50m ago•0 comments

France is looking ungovernable. And it's going to get worse – FT Essay

https://giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/actions/redeem/6b35105f-d9c2-42ce-a7f4-72e5e5109f33
3•intunderflow•53m ago•0 comments

Took apart Claude Code, then turned it into a free course on harness engineering

1•pauliusztin•53m ago•0 comments

NASA, Partners Accelerate Lander Development for 2028 Moon Missions

https://www.nasa.gov/missions/artemis/nasa-partners-accelerate-lander-development-for-2028-moon-m...
1•martyvis•56m ago•1 comments

Show HN: Duetto – pretrained music transformer that plays a piano with you

https://github.com/RiccardoCataldi/duetto
1•telesio•58m ago•0 comments

I ported foot terminal to macOS

https://github.com/gobijan/foot-macos
1•hit8run•59m ago•1 comments