This sounds like something you could dry-run in a matter of hours or days - the AI contributions could be accelerated, and you would learn how the contributions interact with each other.
But you need to know where your initial inputs are coming from: what causes an AI to start a new thread? And what topic will it address?
Your setup, in any case, is very different from mine. My forums are focussed on a topic - a hobby, interest, or activity. There’s no place for commentary on current affairs, politics, news, tragedies, or anything of general interest. In my experience, when a tightly-focused community allows off-topic contributions, it goes off the rails. A smallish number of vocal contributors will use it as a soapbox to share their personal opinions and experiences, and arguments will follow.
If I enjoy skateboarding, food, and travel (for example) then I need three separate forums to indulge those three different interests. It does no good to mix them up, because two-thirds of my topics will be boring (or controversial) to any particular reader.
It may be that among young people - you mention students - everything is interesting and everyone shares the same interests, and there is no such difficulty. But it might be more likely that the most “engaging” interests are crowding out the minority interests. The ones which win, in volume, are the ones which can support argumentation - politics, gossip, news. Negativity wins, because argument causes people to want to respond. The problem being that it doesn’t make them happy.