AI math breakthroughs may crack encryption before quantum computers (opens the source in a new tab)
- Engineers are rolling out postquantum cryptography to guard against future quantum codebreakers. Some cryptographers now fear AI-driven math discoveries could get there first.
- Johns Hopkins cryptographer Matthew Green points to AI labs' recent results, including disproving the Exponential Time Hypothesis, which held that some problems have no shortcuts. Vitalik Buterin has called for 'post-AI cryptography'.
- Coinbase's Yehuda Lindell calls the alarm unhelpful: postquantum algorithms should hold, AI may strengthen them, and at worst keys get longer and systems slower.
Why it matters Bank accounts, email and payments rest on a bet that some math is hard. Encryption upgrades take years, so even a small chance that AI finds shortcuts argues for moving sooner.
Other side Green himself says there is no evidence any of today's algorithms has been broken, and decades of failed attacks count as evidence too. Alarm without a concrete attack can waste money and erode trust in systems that still work.