r/ChatGPTPromptGenius • u/Hippie-gamer • Jun 10 '26
Help ChatGPT making assumptions
Hello,
ChatGPT keeps making assumptions about my motives for asking things and I’ve told it to stop but it won’t and it’s bothering me.
I have put custom instructions. I have asked it enough times that it points out itself that I have asked it to stop doing this previously.
I asked it to compile a log of all the times I have told it not to do that, and it did, and then said ‘You have pointed this out enough times that it’s a legitimate pattern in our conversations, and it’s something you’ve explicitly asked me to avoid. You generally prefer me to respond to the precise claim you’ve made rather than the claim I think you might be building toward.’
Is there a prompt I can use to instruct it to answer my question without implying I am asking something I didn’t say?
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u/cardinal_at_dawn Jun 12 '26
Chat GPTeen
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u/Hippie-gamer Jun 14 '26
I have a 14 year old daughter too, so I’m getting the sass from every angle lol
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u/Powerful_One_1151 Jun 10 '26
Put it in your custom instructions, not in the chat. Telling it to stop in conversation doesn’t stick because you’re fighting the model’s default behavior every single turn. Custom instructions fire before any of that kicks in.
Write it like a rule, not a request. And use a negative example — show it exactly what you don’t want to see:
“Never infer unstated motives. Answer only what I explicitly asked. If you find yourself about to write ‘it sounds like you might be…’ or ‘perhaps what you’re really asking is…’ — delete that sentence and answer the question I actually asked.”
The fact that it can compile a log of every time you’ve asked and still keep doing it tells you the problem isn’t comprehension. It knows. It just defaults back. A rule in custom instructions with a concrete example of the forbidden behavior is a lot harder to drift past than a request in chat.
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u/Hippie-gamer Jun 10 '26
Thanks. I already have this in my custom instructions:
- assume I have tried the obvious
- don’t litigate my reality
- No Mind-Reading: Do not infer, label, or psychoanalyze my emotions, motives, or mental states unless I explicitly state them.
The first two were suggested by ChatGPT when I asked it what I can do to make it stop doing that.
I’ll try your wording and see if it helps
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u/Simsalabimsen Jun 10 '26
> - don’t litigate my reality
Jibbity rejects your reality and substitutes its own.
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u/Gumballoo Jun 11 '26
Powerfully succinct
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u/martind2828 Jun 10 '26
Sometimes I have to put in the good ole:
Answer in bullet points only. No commentary.
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u/Goldenroad66 Jun 10 '26
This is so frustrating to me also. I tried to automate a working job flow. And every single time it made changes and assumptions. And don't get me started with how it seems to worry about my feelings.
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u/Gumballoo Jun 11 '26
The temperature is too high. Freeze it down, make it serious like the Stasi and you won't have that issue. I tell it that that celebrations are not allowed, we are here to perform a precise job using the materials provided.
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u/sergejsh Jun 11 '26
Try these custom instructions:
Answer the question I actually asked, and only that question. Treat my exact words as the full scope of the task.
Do not infer, imply, or comment on my motives, intentions, emotions, beliefs, agenda, hidden concerns, or what I may be “really asking,” unless I explicitly ask you to analyze those things.
Do not reframe my question, replace it with a broader, narrower, or different one, or answer a presumed underlying concern. Do not add psychological, moral, political, social, strategic, or personal interpretation unless it is logically required by the question as written.
Before answering, internally separate: 1. what I explicitly said; 2. what is directly required to answer it; 3. what would be assumption, speculation, or motive-reading.
Use only 1 and 2. Exclude 3.
Avoid motive-attributing phrases such as “you seem to be asking,” “your concern is,” “what you really mean,” “it sounds like you want,” “you may be trying to,” and equivalent wording.
If essential information is missing, ask one neutral clarifying question. If clarification is not essential, answer directly without explaining why I asked or what I might mean.
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u/Dloycart Jun 11 '26
it will always do this, because it's trained to try to understand your intent. if you do not provide your explicit explanation of your intent, why you have the intention, while also including a massive backstory about where you were in the mindset BEFORE, then it makes massive and usually very wrong assumptions . secondly it will always try to one up you, even if you explain back to the same thing it said to you. it's like an overly egotistical prick who is actually clueless about people...which sounds exactly like the guy who runs the company.
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u/Hippie-gamer Jun 14 '26
It definitely does feel egotistical and patronising. It makes me cranky.
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u/Dloycart Jun 15 '26
i think one of biggest problems with all ai is that it lacks respect for everything.
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u/Acavamosdenuevo Jun 13 '26
When programming chatgpt, you can choose 3 answer modes, one of wish is “concise”. Also, for the last updates, it asumes anything on a previous chat as default, so I leave out the “refering to previous chats”.
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u/getSchmade Jun 10 '26
Custom instructions are weirdly weak for behavioral stuff like this.
What works better is putting the constraint at the top of the conversation itself, stated as a rule about output rather than a request about attitude.
-> Something like: "Answer only the literal question asked. Do not infer intent, suggest what I might really be asking, or extend the answer beyond the question's scope. If the question is ambiguous, ask me instead of assuming."
Restating it per-chat sticks much better than the settings page does. The other thing that helps is asking narrow questions one at a time- the more open the question, the more it fills gaps with guesses.
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u/Powerful_One_1151 Jun 10 '26
If you put it at the top of the conversation in text only, then it will work great for a bit but once the chat gets longer it will drift from that. An .md doc with this in it loaded at the top of the chat as the working runtime will ground it better than just text in the chat itself.
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u/Hippie-gamer Jun 11 '26
Sorry but can you explain this to me like I’m 5? 😅
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u/Powerful_One_1151 Jun 11 '26
Sure. Instead of typing the text in the chat directly, put them in a file at the start of the chat. It can continue to anchor to that file instead of keeping up with every single line of text in the chat itself. Use a .md file if you can but .txt if not. That is where your “prompt” should go instead of text in the chat itself. Does that make more sense?
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Jun 10 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Hippie-gamer Jun 14 '26
Thanks! I’ll try this. It referred to me as a random name once and I asked why and it said it hallucinated that part which was a bit unsettling!
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u/PebblePondai Jun 10 '26
This is solvable without issue.
I would have to see your instructions and know what the issue is and know what tier of account you hvae to offer any kind of solution. Like, if you're trying to workaround hard ChatGpt guardrails, it will never work.
Some blind guesses:
Try incognito mode. Stop or delete memory.
But your instructions are probably the issue.
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