Weird. Does the company forbid its staff to use AI assistants?
I get that they want to find out what you know. If you know how to solve problems using an AI, isn't that what they are going to (increasingly) expect you to do on the job?
In fact, demonstrating that you can effectively use AI to develop, would seem to me to be something they'd want to see.
While I don't use it, I'll grant you that AI is good at solving small, repetitive, tedious problems; stuff that's maybe a bit too domain-specific to be widely available in a library, but that's consistently subtly different enough that you have to sink time into either making different implementations or trying to generalize.
AI is generally going to be poor at solving novel problems, and while that's something that you can never really use in an interview for a variety of reasons, I can send you a problem that's likely new to you and see how you tackle it.
I'll also admit that there's not a single good way to do that as it is. Technical interviewing is more of an art than a science, and it's difficult to get really good signal from an interview, generally speaking.
I've been able to tackle problems that would have otherwise taken up too much time and effort between my jobs as both expert witness for software related Federal lawsuits and as a father of two young children.
Here's just a sampling of what I've accomplished since I started using these tools:
A convolutional neural network trained using PyTorch to predict the next chord (as tablature) on a guitar based on image data. Includes labeling software for the image data as well as an iOS app for hosting and running the model.
A web framework written in C using clang blocks for the DSL, per request memory arena, and complete JSON-API compatible ORM, JWT auth, and enough sanitizers and leak detect to make your head spin.
A custom CLI DSL modeled somewhat on AWK syntax written with Python Lex Yacc for turning CSV data into matplotlib graphics.
A custom web framework written in F# that compiles to JS with Fable.
LLMs helped with looking up documentation, higher level architecture, fixing errors, and yes, plenty of boilerplate!
All of this being said, I brought with me almost 30 years of experience writing software and a pretty good idea high level of how to go about building these things. The devil is in the details and that's where the LLM was most useful.
Beyond that, if it helps you spend more time with your family while still being good at your job, that's always a win.
Why would you work somewhere that prescribed your workflow?
You're a professional. Do your job as you see fit, whether that involves AI assistance or not.
> demonstrating that you can effectively use AI to develop, would seem to me to be something they'd want to see.
Irrelevant. They want you to meet business needs more than play with today's shiny technology.
Ironically, the most interesting positions I've held have almost universally been at companies that don't have leetcode-style questions as part of the hiring process.
IMHO, this is the same as disabling linting or compiling. Or why companies (used to) do coding challenges on a white board.