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.

Plants Get Wearables to Track Their Health

https://now.tufts.edu/2026/07/08/plants-get-wearables-track-their-health
1•giuliomagnifico•5m ago•0 comments

Building Synapse offline-first with Loro

https://dhovart.tngl.sh/synapse-blog/loro-offline-first/
1•denzen•6m ago•0 comments

AI drove Shopify back to clean code

https://www.theregister.com/devops/2026/07/25/how-ai-drove-shopify-back-to-clean-code/5277901
1•sbulaev•7m ago•0 comments

The Future of American Defense – Y Combinator [video]

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/iOeW40N-1VI
1•xyzsparetimexyz•11m ago•0 comments

No Stack Overflow, No Autocomplete: What Coding Felt Like in the 80s

https://comuniq.xyz/post?t=1439
4•01-_-•16m ago•2 comments

Upd.dev: Free Git hosting, including the freedom to vibe code

https://upd.dev
4•Xlab•20m ago•0 comments

Show HN: A platformer video game using visual representations of functions

https://function-platformer.vercel.app/
1•dbagr•20m ago•0 comments

When the AI bubble bursts, silver is Eric Sprott's play

https://stockhead.com.au/resources/when-the-ai-bubble-bursts-silver-is-eric-sprotts-play/
1•parallel_shell•21m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Sip-exporter – passive eBPF-based SIP/RTP monitoring with Prometheus

https://github.com/aibudaevv/sip-exporter
1•aibudaev•25m ago•0 comments

PaperScreen: Give your Mac's display a softer, paper-like feel

https://github.com/Bearbobs/PaperScreen
1•anuj0070•28m ago•0 comments

Systemd Linger

https://etbe.coker.com.au/2026/07/24/systemd-linger/
2•edward•31m ago•0 comments

Genesis Mission Overview

https://github.com/donutloop/donutloop-genesis/blob/main/README.md
1•donutloop•32m ago•0 comments

France and Spain wildfires: more than 300k people displaced

https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/26/world/live-news/france-spain-wildfires-evacuations
4•tosh•33m ago•0 comments

As Burlington reviews data centre plan, councillors reject moratorium

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/data-centre-moratorium-burlington-9.7282901
1•01-_-•35m ago•0 comments

Against the System: Rise of the Robots (2001)

https://phrack.org/issues/57/10#article
1•negura•36m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Termic – desktop app for running CLI coding agents (Claude Code, Codex)

https://termic.dev/
1•SimionBaws•37m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Cfbench – A lightweight native CLI for Cloudflare speed tests

https://github.com/fcendesu/cfbench
1•fcen•38m ago•0 comments

Corner Chess

https://cs.nyu.edu/~shasha/drecco/games/2016/cornerchess/
1•tosh•39m ago•0 comments

Emacs Writing Machine

https://chainsawriot.com/postmannheim/2026/07/25/writeredeck.html
1•birdculture•40m ago•0 comments

Robots programmed by kids to speak their Indigenous languages

https://www.npr.org/2026/07/26/nx-s1-5825798/robot-speaks-endangered-native-american-languages
2•defrost•40m ago•1 comments

Apertus 1.5, Swiss open-weight, open-source, open training data model

https://apertus-ai.org/articles/2026-07-apertus-1-5/
1•flaburgan•41m ago•1 comments

Interactive 3D Dice Roller with Custom Physics and Shaders

https://ttrpg.dies.kmcprizmquest.dev/
1•Radversalo•52m ago•0 comments

How to be useful as a software architect

https://swizec.com/blog/how-to-be-useful-as-a-software-architect
2•meetpateltech•54m ago•0 comments

Elevated Errors for Opus 5

https://status.claude.com/incidents/zftg3gqkmv18
2•TimCTRL•55m ago•0 comments

I built a jav data API, need honest feedback

1•javinfo•57m ago•0 comments

Show HN: OpenStrap – use a WHOOP 4.0 band without a subscription

https://openstrap.github.io/edge/
1•abdulsaheel123•1h ago•0 comments

Show HN: Tawrida – Global Trade Tools – Export-Document Generators

https://tawrida.xyz/tools
2•m-zakarya•1h ago•0 comments

Anthropic should learn from those cotton-picking socialists

https://asteriskmag.com/issues/15/rust-and-boll
2•maxall4•1h ago•0 comments

Practice your YC interview against Garry Tan's gstack specialists, on a meeting [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMiIytmoEuk
4•anand_pattern•1h ago•1 comments

High Volume Transaction Processing Without Concurrency Control (1997)

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/2310700_High_Volume_Transaction_Processing_Without_Concu...
1•tosh•1h ago•0 comments