Does anyone else think we might be seeing the automated experiments of some sort of von Neumann probe?

I’ve always wondered why aliens with technology supposedly millions of years beyond our own keep crashing and exhibiting the same behavior over and over.

Is it possible that we’re seeing the result of a malfunctioning or abandoned von Neumann probe that’s been here for millions of years instead of an actual intelligence?

Maybe whoever made it sent out thousands if not millions of devices at sub-light speeds and they drifted along until one landed on a habitable planet.

Presumably, it stayed dormant until it detected whatever signs of intelligence or life its creators specified and then went about using resources in the solar system or on earth to replicate or build autonomous drones-to-order in order to carry out whatever experiments it was told to.

Grays, if they exist, could just be local biomaterial automatically adapted into whatever sort of drone would be best suited to do these experiments.

The cynical part of me thinks that maybe these probes have been mindlessly carrying out these experiments for thousands of years and beaming the data back to a civilization that might not even exist anymore as they await further instructions.

Whatever AI that controls the probe might not even be sophisticated enough to do much beyond carrying out a predetermined set of experiments indefinitely while it waits for more information.

What do you think?