This has been used for centuries. It is not a new invention.
Hundreds of years ago, it was not unusual to publish an encrypted solution of some mathematical problem, in order to establish priority without disclosing the algorithm that was used.
Of course, at that time very simple encryption methods were used, for instance an anagram of the solution was published (i.e. encryption by letter transposition).
If only AI safety research had a mechanism this clear. "We have proof that building the machine will kill everybody, so get to work making a provably safe version."
Except that you have the logic backwards. It's an argument that something ("safe" general purpose AI) can't exist rather than that it has to.
People want AI to be able to do every good thing but no bad thing, which is impossible twice. First because false positives and false negatives trade against each other, so a general purpose AI which can do anything approximating all the good things is going to have the bias leaning heavily towards being able to do things in general and therefore being able to do many things that are bad. And second because "good" and "bad" aren't things that anybody can agree on and then some people will demand that it must do X while others demand that it not do X (e.g. "help the rebels win the war"), which means someone is inherently going to be unsatisfied and it's not a thing that can be sensibly regarded as everyone working towards a common goal.
But the algorithm still isn't practical on existing quantum computers, or ones that are going to be around any time soon, so there's no reason not to publish in full.
> See, some of the most reputable people in quantum hardware and quantum error-correction—people whose judgment I trust more than my own on those topics—are now telling me that a fault-tolerant quantum computer able to break deployed cryptosystems ought to be possible by around 2029.
Evidence that a hard problem is solvable, and information on solution characteristics, are a big help to others.
Even non-disclosure is just science-neutral, not anti-science.
Partial disclosures are common where disclosures involve risky things, or where a problem was solved as part of an economic concern. But there are non-conflicting opportunities to partially inform others.
That's the whole point. And it's not "build on their work", it's "question their work", because so far every time someone's announced some magic quantum thing it's been followed up shortly afterwards by people poking holes on it, a famous recent example being the "quantum computer" that was replaced by /dev/random and it produced the same results. So the magic here isn't the quantum, it's coming up with a way to publish a claim in a way that it can't be refuted.
Hundreds of years ago, it was not unusual to publish an encrypted solution of some mathematical problem, in order to establish priority without disclosing the algorithm that was used.
Of course, at that time very simple encryption methods were used, for instance an anagram of the solution was published (i.e. encryption by letter transposition).