Strangely, I haven't read a single headline about AI making breakthroughs in Quantum computing... but you know certain players are working in that direction.

Back in the 80s they were teaching that cryptography protected secrets "for a time" and how long they need to be protected dictated how hard you go at the key length and other costs of en/decryption. By the 00s we could easily and quickly run key lengths so hard (for conventional computation) to crack that they were essentially protected "forever" - at least until quantum algorithms shake things up a bit. That's the next unknown: when Shor's algorithm will start delivering real world results - like the end of BTC.