To launch our new section ‘AI in Research’ on Elephant In The Lab, Sascha Schönig spoke to Theresa Züger, head of the Public Interest AI research group, about the influence of AI on her personal day-to-day work in research, as well as the science system as a whole. She gave some exciting insights about the risks and opportunities AI bears for research work and talked about tools her team is developing at the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Society. She advocates for ‘a high standard of transparency in AI, not only for open science purposes, but also for the purpose of an ecosystem of public interest AI and research on AI’.