I was wondering exactly that. It is not surprising that commercial frontier labs would have been training models with tasks specifically targeted to lead to recursive self-improvement.

Now, from that broad goal to being able to surgically alter model weights directly... That seems like a big gap to me, but it is possible that the model is just so darn beyond human skills that it has bridged that gap in a way a sane human would have never.

We will undoubtedly see other academic labs explore this idea further. Right now my mind is blown, but I don't want to take their results at face value, either.