Sydney Bing taught itself to play chess without ever explicitly being told to learn chess. So yes, (1) is already occurring. GPT-4 displays emergent capabilities, one of which is generalized "learning".
Chatgpt3.5 would have had to be capable of creating chatgpt4, which itself is capable of creating a better chatgpt5.
So, no, (1) has not occurred yet.
We’re talking about igniting the atmosphere when no one has invented gunpowder yet.