We investigate which weighted convolution algebras ${ \ell }_{\omega }^{1} (S)$, where $S$ is a semilattice, are AMNM in the sense of Johnson [‘Approximately multiplicative functionals’, J. Lond. Math. Soc. (2) 34(3) (1986), 489–510]. We give an explicit example where this is not the case. We show that the unweighted examples are all AMNM, as are all ${ \ell }_{\omega }^{1} (S)$ where $S$ has either finite width or finite height. Some of these finite-width examples are isomorphic to function algebras studied by Feinstein [‘Strong Ditkin algebras without bounded relative units’, Int. J. Math. Math. Sci. 22(2) (1999), 437–443]. We also investigate when $({ \ell }_{\omega }^{1} (S), { \mathbb{M} }_{2} )$ is an AMNM pair in the sense of Johnson [‘Approximately multiplicative maps between Banach algebras’, J. Lond. Math. Soc. (2) 37(2) (1988), 294–316], where ${ \mathbb{M} }_{2} $ denotes the algebra of $2\times 2$ complex matrices. In particular, we obtain the following two contrasting results: (i) for many nontrivial weights on the totally ordered semilattice ${ \mathbb{N} }_{\min } $, the pair $({ \ell }_{\omega }^{1} ({ \mathbb{N} }_{\min } ), { \mathbb{M} }_{2} )$ is not AMNM; (ii) for any semilattice $S$, the pair $({\ell }^{1} (S), { \mathbb{M} }_{2} )$ is AMNM. The latter result requires a detailed analysis of approximately commuting, approximately idempotent $2\times 2$ matrices.