Played about three hours yesterday. Looks like I've been luckier than some, but here's my limited experience.
I intended in participating in the Hangover CG, delivering coffee.
After reading this thread I decided to be cautious and headed there first in my ASP. All went fine, no interdictions.
So I headed back to 39 Tauri and grabbed my Python. I was then interdicted in about 1 out of 2 SC trips to the CG station. My combat rank is Competent, and my interdictors were only Dangerous and Elite (it's an Anarchy system, might be the cause?). I decided to play safe and run, my Python has 5D shields, one 0A shield booster and is fully armed but I use it mainly as a trader.
To my surprise I was able to fight off most interdictions doing the mini-game (in the blue zone when trying to align with escape vector and full throttle when aligned seemed to work), I once submitted to an Elite Adder but put 4 pips in shield boosted away and high-waked before he could do anything more than scratch my shields.
Then I was interdicted by a Dangerous Cobra, escape vector was jumping all around and his red bar was raising quick, so 4 pips to sys and throttle to zero. Message says I'm submitting, but still it doesn't and I come out of SC tumbling all over and with the long FSD recharge time. I decide to try killing him, deploy weapons, and start shooting as soon as he's facing me.
As expected my twin large pulse lasers make short work of his shields, and I start to chew his hull with my two medium multicannons. The battle turns into a series of head-on passes, and everytime I face a volley of missiles (dumbfire I guess). At one moment he's down to 58% hull and I still have one and a half rings in my shields. As we turn once more to face each other I see his shields are fully recharged. And then my two large pulse lasers don't seem to make anything anymore to his shields, while his constant volleys of missiles finally get the better of my shields (I didn't find any point defense in the four stations I had visited so far) and my hull start to get damaged, canopy breached. I decide to run and I high wake out of there. Land at the nearest station in the system I jumped to with 1 min of oxygen left. Phew! (First time I think I might upgrade my Life support module).
I think the fight was pretty balanced and I was expecting to win until he was able to recharge his shields and from them it started to look a bit fishy, I had the impression that his shields got stronger and that he had unlimited missiles....still I made it alive and was able to repair and deliver my goods in the end.
Played again in the evening, just had one interdiction by a dangerous NPC but was able to beat it via the mini-game. Found an outpost during a mission where I was finally able to buy a point defence.
I didn't find the AI I faced hard to fight, but from my experience and reading certain posts, I'm a bit skeptical about them having the exact same limitations as players (ammo counts, heat and chaff limitations...). At one point I felt that the balance of the fight turned against me and there was nothing I could do to prevent that.
Voted "other" as I feel it's mostly a question of some weapons/mod loadouts that are out of balance and that the AI still hasn't the same restrictions as players in some departements (intended or bug I don't know).