Life Cycle: Portraits of the People Building AI is a short documentary about the humans behind artificial intelligence development in the United States and China. Working in the cinéma vérité tradition, the film tells this story through intimate, observational portraits — rendering the economic, political, and cultural forces shaping AI through the concrete emotional experiences of the individuals navigating them. The film's central argument is that AI is not inevitable or objective, but a human artifact built by people with specific histories, cultural values, and blind spots.