In September, I believe we first started using staged missions, some of those are AI kills. We haven't had much recent luck with joinable staged missions running without issues however. We can run some AI only partrols but that gets old quick without any structure and requires someone to run them throughout the day.
We have some really cool content to use in joinable staged missions and it would be great to have a system where we could auto launch them on the hour throughout the day.
Hopefully, the development of that system will pick up again once the new terrain engine is completed.
As far as population, it's hit and miss. US evenings offer the best chance of seeing players in there.