Oh yeah it's undoubtedly an advancement but as you said, to fire someone over that is an overreaction and that's putting it generously.
I understand taking some form of action if there was evidence of something potentially catastrophic, or at least 1 step removed from that. Do they have public guidelines on where they draw the line? What's the procedure that says "at this point we pull the plug?". I highly doubt it says "when it can do basic math".