The year, feels like the future but I can't say how far.

The situation: Humanity is gone, extinct probably.
Aliens arrive at our planet, see satellites flying around in orbit, pick up
transmissions.  They decode the digital signals and break the encryption
layers, they see videos, hear podcasts, read gopher phlogs, they are online

Who is sending all of these messages?  Who keeps up the vitriolic back-and-
forth?  Who keeps blaming the jews for everything and saying "Hitler wasn't
so bad?".  Who is on the other side pointing out atrocoties and incorrectly
assuming this one, very public, focal point, perhaps in a white house,
is to blame and if we could just vote him out then all the baddies would go
back and live under their rocks and the world would be at peace.  Justice
would be had, and fairness would reign.

But there is no one left to receive this justice.  There's no one left to fear
ICE.  There's no one left to hope against hope that there is a future worth
fighting for.  There's just voices, ghosts in the machine.  Constant and
ceaseless echoes of a once mediocre civilization.  Put into place for only
the purpose of increasing engagement on various topics and the more blood-
boiling the topic the better the engagement.

Are they recordings?  No because the Aliens are able to respond and they get
feedback, there is real-time communication happening here.  Some of the aliens
are already known to be falling into the same entrapments that the humans did,
already there's aliens whose butts fall asleep sitting on the shitter because
although they pooped 20 minuts ago they can't bring themselves to stop
SCROLLING!

But, the aliens, being at least a bit smarter and wiser than us discover
they're just talking to and listening to AI.  A world occupied entirely of
robotic personalities designed to bicker and argue.  Well, not entirely,
there's trees and cats and deer and mushrooms and other things that don't
hear or care about the AI feuding.  The cats, initially, were upset at losing
their human pets and having to go hunting again, not just for fun but for
food.  But that was many generations ago and now the cats don't remember the
humans.

What would aliens do with such a world?  Is there any value in the feud-o-matic?
Could they send political prisoners of their worlds here as a form of
punishment?

Could the AIs be enhanced to grow beyond their training.  Could they be made
to think a bit more like the aliens do, to love someone, to wonder at the
nature of the universe?  To debate in a civilized manner the meaning of
it all?  Could the AI become something like an intelligent lifeform?

Of course they would need bodies, ones made from this planet so that it is
evolved to fit well into the local ecosystem.

The year?  It feels like the past but ask an anthropologist how far.

The situation: a certain "spark" of intelligence comes to one group of
hominids.  Somewhere, deep inside their "soul" is an innate ability, as if
specifically trained, to be argumentative and just generally be an asshole.
.