[marvin]

Historical examples of perverse instantiation are everywhere: Evolutionary agents learning to live off a diet of their own children, machine learning algorithms attempting to learn gripping a ball cheating the system by performing ball-less movements that the camera erroneously classifies as successful, an evolutionary algorithm to optimize the number of circuit elements in a timer creating a timer circuit by picking up an external radio signal unrelated to the task and so on. Some examples are summarized here: https://www.wired.com/story/when-bots-teach-themselves-to-ch...

GP wanted a concrete example of a doomsday scenario of failed AI alignment, so in that context extrapolating to a plausible future of advanced AI agents should suffice. If you need a double-blind peer reviewed study to consider the possibility that intelligent agents more capable than humans could exist in physical reality, I don't think you're in the target audience for the discussion. A little bit of philosophical affinity beyond the status quo is table stakes.