"As it happens, I have recently acquired a Ninth Empire artifact that has - well, not sentience, but the seed of sentience. I will probably be spending considerable time seeing if I can uplift it. If I succeed, and if the AI is interested, I would be flattered to have it be your student."

It or she or he or whatever.

"Would two students be better than one? I learned a great deal about mathematics and programming rather late in life, so I know I have the ability to learn new complex systems."