you probably could've spent the same time doing a very similar thing but produced something of much greater value (money, software that people will actually use

What, specifically, would you suggest?

research that will actually be built on

This is one desired outcome of these AI challenges.

building a functioning team of programmers out of loosely-committed geographically-dispersed acquaintances is ridiculously hard, and if you could do it, you wouldn't waste that power on a game.

No, this is completely arse-about. The "game" should be used as a medium to develop cooperation skills.