@jenzi @kaye Aliens receive the stock quotes, along with what are apparently videos of our planet, from our satellite transmissions and conclude the Earth is a fantastically wealthy place they cannot wait to visit.

When the first diplomatic mission arrives, they find an entirely dead planet. The stock quotes were from AIs. The videos were advertisements for video games also written by AIs.

@kaye Give it another thousand years.

Aliens land on this planet and find that all humans are extinct and have been for a few hundred years, but this economy is still running and the NASDAQ continues to climb as the bots trade with each other.

Mass transit continues to travel through the empty cities carrying parts to repair machinery.

AI continues to post ads on the Internet.

The aliens decide to make the Earth a museum, where their students can visit to see how not to run a planet.