I always wondered if they could see us, would they recognize us as something to care about? I see ants on my porch, but they don't really matter much to me.
Idk, there are still people that study ants. Both professionally and as a hobby. Just because you don't care doesn't mean someone doesn't. I don't know why the same wouldn't be true for aliens. Unless those aliens are ant like (hive mind...ish)
What percentage of ants that exist are studied? They absolutely study some, but the vast majority of ants won't ever be acknowledged by a human. That seems like a relevant factor here if the assumption is that humans are like ants in both interest level and commonality in the universe.
Not to mention there are endless number of nature documentaries on Ants. If ants were not interesting then the National Geographic channel wouldn't have ant documentaries as often as they do.
I'm not sure I like this line of reasoning because it implies that the ants aren't aware of us. Certainly they are in some cases. Ants are able to physically perceive us. So if aliens aren't using some means of passive remote sensing to study us then I don't see why we wouldn't also notice them (though they may have good reason to not use active means). Sure, the ants aren't aware of what why we're hanging out around them, but they are aware of us.
When you live to be a billion, you probably study ants just to have something better to do than bitch about joint pain.
And having seen many, many, many ant hills, specific ones with slight odd variations unnoticed by people who are merely a million years old would stand out like a flashing neon sign and you would be all "Hello! What, pray tell, is this?!" while everyone looked at you funny because they lack context.
Most ants are benign. Some ants will eat your house. We have the technological capacity to make our own planet uninhabitable to humans and perhaps to any kind of life if we tried hard enough. We could probably do pretty nasty things to planets in other star systems if we were sufficiently motivated to do so and weren't in any great hurry.
An advanced alien civilization might see us not as threatening per se but rather as a potential problem they have to manage somehow and not just ignore.