Sure, the lulz is a distraction from doing real good, but so was phreaking. It turns out that the skills used in both lulz-getting and phreaking can be used for good as well as evil. (See: Project Chanology, Dusty the cat.)
They're not hackers in the same sense that many of us are. But that wasn't how the term was used in the article, so big deal.
To say that 4chan is a way to do good is like saying that rolling dice is a good way to get the answer to an addition problem. Sure, you will occasionally get a good answer, but it would be much better to use a decent technique to get good results consistently.
I think 4chan gets too much credit for the few good things they do. They are like an application of the monkeys pounding away on typewriters theory. Eventually those monkeys might produce a few interesting words, but most of it is just going to be a mess. Likewise, 4chan may occasionally produce some good results, but in my mind any good they do is far outweighed by the bad.
Clearly, the term hacker is broad and holds connotations that vary from person to person. Personally, though, I don't view 4chan as a community of true hackers, just a community of clowns that occasionally does some good, but a lot of bad as well.
He didn't say 4chan was a way to do good. He said 4chan can do good or it can do evil, but the real point is to get lulz (regardless of good or evil).
Any useful output that comes out of 4chan could be achieved in a much more intelligent and efficient way. At best they're taking a brute force approach, throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks. People who are easily impressed by the results are ignoring the noise.
I also worry that the amount of child porn that's regularly posted on /b/ could come back to haunt Mr. Poole if he tries to us his fame to launch a real career.