Many people (not necessarily you, IDK) seem to model the genie as attempting to attack us while maintaining plausible deniability that it simply misinterpreted our instructions, which, naturally, does occasionally happen because there's only so much information in words and we're only so smart.

This is something that people do (and some forms of wish granters do implement this form of 'malicious obedience'). However this is not what is occurring in this particular situation. This is mere obedience, not malicious obedience. An entirely different (and somewhat lesser) kind of problem. (Note that this reply is to your point, not to Will's point which is not quite the same and which I mostly agree with.)

You are hoping for some sort of benevolent power that does what is good for us using all information available including prayers and acting in our best interests. That would indeed be an awesome thing and if I were building something it is would be what I created. But it would be a different kind of creature to either a genie<literal> as in the initial example, genie<malicious obedience> as your reply assumes or the genie<connotative meaning> that is (probably) just as easy to create and specify (to within an order of magnitute or two).

In other words, it isn't trying to understand what we mean; it's trying to hurt us without dropping the pretense of trying to understand what we mean. And that's pretty anthropomorphic, isn't it?

Not especially. That is, it is generic agency, not particularly humanlike agency. It is possible to create a genie that does try to understand what me mean. It is also possible to create an agent that that does understand what we mean then tries to the worst for us within the confines of literal meaning. Either of these goal systems could be described as anthropomorphic.