I don’t suppose that animated movies made totally by AI could be very successful, but used with human guidance all through the method, they could in all probability work very well. When the Heritage Lottery Fund first emerged from the National Lottery bonanza 30 years ago Art News its first chairman, Lord Jacob Rothschild, had lunch with a gaggle of arts journalists who requested him what the new fund would do. “That’s what I was hoping you’ll be succesful of tell me” he joked.

But as a show for mass consumption, it does little to decode the internal mechanisms of …