In old-school chess AIs, zugzwang is also of interest because it can break null-move pruning[0], which is a way to prune the search tree. "Null move" just means "skip your turn", and the assumption that skipping your turn is always worse than the optimal move. But in zugzwang positions, that assumption is wrong, so you have to avoid doing null-move pruning.

Stockfish's heuristic for "risk of zugzwang" is basically "only kings and pawns left over", alongside logic for "is null-move pruning even useful right now" [1]:

    // Step 9. Null move search with verification search
    if (cutNode && ss->staticEval >= beta - 16 * depth - 53 * improving + 378 && !excludedMove
        && pos.non_pawn_material(us) && ss->ply >= nmpMinPly && !is_loss(beta))
    {

[1]: https://github.com/official-stockfish/Stockfish/blob/1a882ef...