I find this all rather intriguing because to me it says more about the employers/interviewers than the applicants.

Over the years I've interviewed many people for technical positions and there are many ways of getting to the core of a prospective employee's competence.

Of course there are questions about training, past experience, qualifications and those about the work you expect them to perform but other matters also enter the equation and they're almost as important (the person's demeanor, confidence, etc.). By letting the person do most of the talking—explaining things about themselves and their work—you can learn a great deal.

Stating the obvious, interviewers ought to be on top of the job they're hiring for but from this story and from other anecdotal info I know that's not always so. In my case as head of the department I was pretty much up to speed on most aspects of the work, so it was clear to me when an applicant was spinning me BS. If they knew more than I did then they almost certainly got the job (life's easier when you've smart employees, for starters one can ask them questions instead of vice versa).

What's that leading up to? Well, when interviewing it was obvious to me (and to the other interviewers) within just the first few minutes whether the person was worth considering. It's uncanny how good one can become at doing this (and my record speaks for itself, I was pretty pleased with those employees I hired).

Let me illustrate with an example: some decades ago I had an applicant apply for an electronics job. He spoke only Chinese and a few broken words in English and none of us on the interview panel spoke Chinese. BTW, he turned up with a Chinese/English dictionary in hand.

I dispelled with many of the questions I usually asked and showed him a somewhat complex circuit diagram with many subsections that performed very different functions (if I showed this at all then it was usually towards the end of an interview).

Within seconds of looking at the diagram he progressed logically through the processes from beginning to the end (note the processes/stages were not drawn in linear progression and consisted of many branches). He did this mainly by pointing.

It was immediately obvious to both my independent technical assessor and me that this guy knew his subject very well. The only point was a minor objection from the nontechnical employment officer who questioned if we'd manage to communicate adequately with someone who didn't speak English. I didn't see that as a significant issue.

He turned out to be an excellent employee who knew his work very well. And within six months his English was good enough not to be an issue.

In summary, if AI is a problem now then it will be more so in the future and that needs to be tackled. That said, I find it hard to accept that an experienced interviewer can't quickly cut to the core even when an interviewee puts up smoke screens and distracting noise.

Like, Popper's falsifiability it doesn't take much to knock a BS or inconsistent argument off its pedestal when one has enough data, refutability usually works well.

That said, one must always keep in mind that just because an applicant can get some things wrong it doesn't mean that he/she isn't the best person for the job. All that tells me is that I have to probe a little deeper.

Edit: asking awkward or trick questions usually ought to be avoided. An interviewee is usually already under considerable stress and can easily be flummoxed when asked them (even if they know the answers they can bind up and not spell them out).

Usually, it's immediately obvious when an interviewee doesn't know an answer to a question or is struggling with it because of stress—body language alone usually makes that abundantly clear. It's then best to gently segue to another question. If the question is really relevant to the job then one can return to it at the end of the interview when the person is more at ease. By then, it's pretty clear to the panel whether the applicant is in the running or not. If not, then do not return to the question.