I Can Tell When You’re Using AI in My Interviews. Here’s How.

And why “I don’t know” is now the best answer you can give me.

At Desktop Commander, we’ve been hiring at our own pace. No rush. No pressure. Just looking for the right people.

And somewhere along the way, I developed a new rule. One I now state upfront at the beginning of every interview:

I give more points to ‘I don’t know’ than to someone clearly reading from a screen.

This usually gets a nervous laugh. But I’m serious.

The Pattern I Keep Seeing

It’s easy to spot now. And not because their eyes are moving like they’re reading.

Candidates whose answers come a beat too late. Words that sound technically correct but feel… disconnected from the situation. A strange emotional flatness, like the person on the other end isn’t fully there.

They’re not googling. They’re not typing.

They have some kind of AI assistant listening to our conversation and generating answers in real-time.

Why Real-Time AI Fails in Interviews

Here’s the thing most people don’t understand about AI:

Humans have a superpower AI can’t yet match — instant, deep grasp of context from minimal input.

In a real-time conversation, we know what’s actually being asked. We have theory of mind — the ability to step into someone else’s shoes, grasp the gravity of the situation, understand what and why something is being asked. We have skin in the game.

AI doesn’t. Not yet.

In theory, given enough context, AI can simulate this. But it requires feeding it everything: What’s the company? Who are you speaking with? What’s the emotion in the voice? What happened 30 seconds ago in the conversation? Dozens of signals.

That can be done — but not in real-time. Not with today’s tools.

So what happens when someone uses a listening AI to generate interview answers on the fly?

The answers come out generic. Like asking someone to answer a question they didn’t fully hear. Shallow question in, shallow answer out.

Asking AI to listen to a live conversation and provide deeply relevant, personal, contextual answers? I haven’t seen any tool do that well. Not yet.

How I Test For It

When I start to feel something is off, I shift my questions.

I stop asking about skills or frameworks. Instead, I ask deeply contextual, personal questions about their work:

• “What was the last task that genuinely frustrated you? Why?”
• “Tell me about a project that didn’t go the way you expected. What happened?”
• “What’s something you changed your mind about recently in how you work?”

These questions require lived experience. Emotional memory. Personal context that no AI assistant has access to.

The AI-assisted answer? It comes back vague. Textbook. Zero emotion.

And here’s the second tell: the person reading the AI’s answer in real-time has no idea what emotion to convey. So there’s none. Their delivery is flat. Disconnected.

It feels like I’m not speaking with a living person.

I asked a question. I got read back a bunch of words that technically form an answer — but aren’t really an answer. As if my question wasn’t truly heard.

Deeply disconnected.

I’ve ended multiple interviews early because there was simply no point continuing.

I’m Not Anti-AI. I Run an AI Company.

Let me be clear: I love AI at work.

At Desktop Commander, we’re building tools that let AI do real work on your actual computer — touching files, running commands, automating workflows. I spend my days thinking about how to make AI more useful.

So this isn’t about being anti-AI. It’s about signal vs. noise in hiring.

If you can show me you’re good at using AI — and I can see you doing it, making decisions, steering it, knowing when to trust it and when not to — that’s a skill. A valuable one. Show me that, and I’m impressed.

But if all I see is AI talking through you? Then I have no idea who I’m hiring.

I’m not interviewing the AI. I’m interviewing you. Your judgment. Your experience. Your ability to think on your feet. Your personality.

If you hide behind the assistant, I can’t see any of that.

The Irony

Here’s what’s ironic: by trying to seem more competent, these candidates reveal less.

A confident “I don’t know, but here’s how I’d figure it out” tells me everything.

A perfect-sounding answer with no soul tells me nothing.

Don’t Be That Candidate

If you’re interviewing soon, here’s my advice:

1. Be honest about what you don’t know. It’s a strength, not a weakness.
2. If you use AI to prepare, great. Use it to research the company, practice answers, understand the role. But in the live conversation? Be present.
3. Bring emotion. Real stories have feeling. Real frustrations have heat. Real wins have joy. Let that come through.
4. Show yourself first. The AI can come later — after I know who I’m actually working with.

Show yourself. Not the assistant.

By the way — we’re hiring at Desktop Commander. If this resonated with you (in a good way), check out our careers page.