A few days ago there was a story about how an AI store was failing horribly. It can't do that, but at the same time will destroy us?
Not "at the same time". You're conflating what AI can do now with what it will likely be able to do in a year or five, or 20.
Amodei and others are worried about what AI that doesn't yet exist may do, not about what current-generation AI can do. AI is getting better, very quickly, and unless there's some blocking obstacle that no one has been able to identify will at some point become far, far smarter than humans, individually or collectively. So before that happens, we need to figure out how to make sure that superintelligent AI wants to help us, and wants to do it in the right way.