100s of world-class researchers are trying desperately to get papers into journals fast enough to keep their labs funded.

Carmack may have other priorities. This can only be good.

100s of world-class researchers may be good at coming up with new ideas and hypotheses towards AGI, but are they good enough programmers to test all of them in reasonable time, with relevant data sets?

He will be surrounded by brilliant peers, sounds good.

I bet those people don't read comments on HN, so I'm not too concerned.