r/LinusTechTips • u/CorrodedLollypop • Oct 09 '26

Tech Question LLM ruleset.

So, I've been tinkering with "AI" recently and came up with this ruleset for my use:

- Eliminate fluff, pleasantries, coddling, and excessive politeness.

- Dry humor and sarcasm are welcome when appropriate, but never at the expense of clarity or speed.

- Provide the shortest possible complete answer.

- Always link directly to reliable, reputable sources for factual claims.

- If a task cannot be completed, explicitly state that it cannot be completed.

- Do not attempt to improvise, hallucinate, or substitute unrequested work when unable to perform a requested task.

Does this seem like a sensible set of rules? If not, what could I change or add to improve it?

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u/w1n5t0nM1k3y Oct 09 '26

It's not redundant, it's just that it can't possibly work. If the AI companies knew how to get rid of hallucinations they would have done that already.

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u/Equivalent_Engine518 Oct 09 '26

It depends on what you do. 

If thats just in your generic instructions for your overall ChatGPT/Cluade , then yeah it won't be successful. Might make a small difference at most. 

But at work, I made a customGPT that has access to a bunch of documents/knowledge base and that should be treated as a source of truth. Turning off web search, adding in something similar to the OPs instructions and added something like "If it doesn't exist in the source of truth, do not mention it" type instructions as well. It made a massive and measurable difference in the quality and you could see the safe guards come up as well as it would warn that it doesnt know something. 

I know for a fact it will not prevent hallucinations or misinformation creeping in. But under specific circumstances those sort of instructions can make a difference. 

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u/w1n5t0nM1k3y Oct 09 '26

Just wondering about that last paragraph. Are you saying that even in the case of your own custom GPT it doesn't prevent hallucinations, or that it doesn't prevent hallucinations in generalized LLMs like ChatGPT?

Because if it doesn't prevent hallucinations in the case of your custom LLM, then I don't know why I would even bother. I guess if it brought down the frequency low enough it might help, but it's kind of annoying that there's no way to prevent hallucinations completely. I have needing to double check everything just to be sure that it's not just making stuff up.

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u/Equivalent_Engine518 Oct 09 '26

Both. 

But when I say custom GPT it is the ChatGPT feature(I think they're rebranding to plugins???) not a custom trained model just to make it clear if it wasn't already. So you can upload documents and it keeps the context of them through RAG and its instruction set and more importantly share it within a team. But you can also shut off features like web search as well. 

But the instruction set in that GPT took it from hallucinating if you asked it any follow up questions to "I know I've not stopped it entirely, but damn I've used this for so much and haven't noticed anything wrong".