By celestial beings. You can call them aliens, demons, angels, interdenominational ai, or whatever.
No they dont think of you as ants. They are testing the genetic progress of a 4 trillion year old experiment. You might think that's a long time, but to them 2,000 years is a minute.
>“You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.”