AI bills can be as big as a postdoc salary. Is the cost worth it?


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Recent price hikes, usage limitations and unreliable outputs are causing some scientific researchers to think twice about using artificial intelligence.

James Zou has spent “well over US$100,000” on artificial intelligence in the past year. “These models are very useful for researchers, for coding, for analysis, for literature summaries,” says Zou, a biomedical-data scientist who leads the AI for Science Laboratory at Stanford University in California.

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-026-01369-z

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