AI Tools for Research

PDF version of the slides presented at the workshop "AI in Academia: Efficiency, Transparency, and Responsibility" organized by Emily Kate Genatowski at the University of Vienna (13-15 October 2025).

The presentation covers five main points relating to the efficiency of using AI tools in research:

1. Choose your tool: a presentation of the criteria to consider when selecting a tool, including the question whether AI should be used for certain tasks.
2. Refine your prompts: an overview of the OpenAI Playground, including possible settings for LLMs, and an example of using the OpenAI API.
3. In the cloud or local?: advantages and disadvantages of using a model in the cloud/locally. Presentation of several options for running models locally (GPT4All, Ollama etc.)
4. Talk with your data: how Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) works and what are its benefits.
5. Let AI do more for you: conclusion and a very quick sneak peek at evolving technologies in AI.