NEARLY 300 participants descended on the Banff Centre for the National Summit on Artificial Intelligence and Culture in March. Co-hosted by the federal government, and set among the surreally beautiful Rockies, it was the first gathering of its kind in Canada, convening a who’s who of cultural heavyweights—from the CBC to the National Film Board, from the Royal Ontario Museum to the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec—with artists, journalists, policymakers, technologists, coders, parliamentarians, and entrepreneurs. Organizers even found room for a circus troupe. The dining...