Is that the hang-up? Like are people so unimaginative to see that none of this was here five years ago and now this machine is -- if still only in part -- assembling itself?

And the details involved in closing some of the rest of that loop do not seem THAT complicated.

You don't know how involved it was. I would imagine it helped debug some tools that they used to create it. Getting it to actually end to end produce a more capable model without any human help absolutely is that complicated.