It’s excusable if you didn’t notice it when a scientist named Daniel J. Buehrer, a retired professor from the National Chung Cheng University in Taiwan, published a white paper earlier this month proposing a new class of math that could lead to the birth of machine consciousness. Keeping up with all the breakthroughs in the field of AI can be exhausting, we know. Robot consciousness is a touchy subject in artificial intelligence circles. In order to have a discussion around the idea of a computer that can ‘feel’ and ‘think,’ and has it’s own motivations, you first have to find two people who actually agree on the semantics of sentience.