The Science, Technology, and Society 20th Anniversary Conference, held from Nov. 3 to Nov. 5, was supposed to start promptly at 5 p.m. in Paine Hall, so I rushed there — but I shouldn’t have worried.

Last month, we witnessed the viral sensation of several egregiously bad AI-generated figures published in a peer-reviewed article in Frontiers, a reputable scientific journal. Scientists on social ...