Do technical interviewers feel guilty about their hard questions?
One might expect this, especially for those trying to identify candidates with high inherited intelligence, in an age of AI where such intelligence might be less important.
Why should anyone feel guilty about asking hard/difficult questions? It's not always about what you know but about your ability to stop and think, or in some cases to admit you can't answer the question. The last one isn't a sign of weakness but it is a sign of self awareness and the recognition that your knowledge and experience has limits.
I ask hard questions to see how you handle them. One of the most important things you can say in a technical interview is "I don't know". You can't know everything, and how you handle running off the end of your knowledge says a lot.
Why would they? Hard questions are useful. The purpose of an interview is to determine whether you would want to have the candidate as a co-worker. For a technical interview, that means you want to understand how they approach problems and communicate about their thinking and solutions. In order to watch someone at work, you need to give them some actual work to do, which means that the problem you set must be hard enough to require genuine effort.
Easy questions would be a waste of everyone's time.
Why would intelligence be less important?
Nope. It’s all really to feel you out. There are many considerations for a well suited candidate, how one handles being put on the spot is one of them.
Besides, if you really think it’s the smarties who are no longer necessary, there may be other things you’re missing that “tell” during these interviews.