Quantum-safe algorithms may fail faster with powerful AI tools From SIKE

A cryptographic algorithm once considered a leading candidate for quantum-resistant encryption fell in just one hour on a standard laptop, not to a quantum computer, but to a mathematical insight from 1997. The Supersonic Multivariates Isogeny Key Encapsulation (SIKE) protocol advanced to the fourth round of evaluation by the National Institute of Standards and Technology before mathematicians Wouter Castryck and Thomas Decru connected its structure to Ernst Kani’s decades-old theorem. This collapse highlights a growing vulnerability, as frontier AI systems now possess the capacity to rapidly explore obscure mathematical connections, potentially shortening the window between overlooked weakness and successful attack, according to security leaders. “Years without a successful attack provide evidence, but they cannot establish that every useful mathematical connection has been explored,” the researchers noted. In May 2026, OpenAI reported that an internal model disproved a longstanding conjecture associated with Erdős’s planar unit-distance problem, first posed in 1946. The model applied sophisticated algebraic number theory to a seemingly elementary geometry question, a transfer of ideas between fields that produced a major result. This month, OpenAI announced an AI-generated solution to the Navier-Stokes existence and smoothness problem, unresolved for roughly 90 years, and released…