NPCs in Skyrim have two modes. Daytime and nighttime. Though the day of the week changes they do the same exact things, there are no holidays. There is no attempt at AI. Every guard likes both two handed and one handed weapons, they all used to be adventurers until they took an arrow in the knee. Towns people have no personality although they have names and backgrounds... If they are involved with a quest, they recognize you until you complete it.
The game is full of NPCs yet some how manages to feel isolated. People do not interact with each other, even if it is a family of NPCs. Everyone just has a one-liner, or walks around repeating the same conversations over and over and over.

What would you like? A game crammed with useless dialogue and banter between npc's that may or may not have anything to do with a quest just so that, for the second you are passing by them, you hear a wonderful new piece of rubbish dialogue that makes no difference to your game except to fill a lonely hole in your soul?

When the Creation Kit comes out, I will create a deep NPC with personality. He will recognize your race and gender. You will be able to have friendly conversation with him. He will have interests and hobbies. He will offer you food and drink. Eventually, you can convince him to join you as a companion.

Basically, yes.

There's more than just daytime and nighttime. There are several activities for each time of the day. For example, at 8pm, children go to bed but advlts eat and read. They only go to bed later in the night.
Currently, the NPCs have tons of differents activities, which makes the game alive. You could add some more of course, you're welcome to mod that. Note that NPCs aren't always doing the same thing. Kill a member of their family and they will react. That's better than a lot of other games. With Skyrim we're going further from usual generic NPCs.

This game is supposed to be an open world game with character and depth. Right now it is nothing but one generic cliche after another. Lazy programming, forgettable characters who feel more like robots, and a combat system and economy that is completely out of balance. Maybe there is not a hole in my sole as much as there is a hole in the shell of a game that is Skyrim.

I'll be looking forward to that! It's definitely up to inspired people like you to make this game great.

Agreed, people like this should be roped in to save this game, tho I think it's beyond mods and updates to fix this game *cough*remake*cough*

True true but so what? Tell me a game that does open world game AI better than Bethesda.