This is fascinating, didn't even know mining can be consolidated from several currencies into one.
I don't want to call AUR a scam, because there are simpler ways to run a scam. They do seem to be putting in some genuine effort. All the data about Iceland is accurate, and they do seem to be distributing the currency. And this is a fun experiment, I love experiments.
Don't make things black and white people!

Is it probably the Dev will make some moneys of this? Probably
Are they actually distributing cash to Icelanders? Yeah, evidently so if you check twitter.
Is it a cool experiment? Hell yeah.

Let's set some shit straight:
ASIC's do not make a currency more or less secure, because ASIC's cost more than pocket change but not immence amount, small companies instead of individuals are going to be in charge of the network. Indirectly manufacturers of ASIC's also have influence.
Bitcoin is already a currency mined entirely by ASIC's. It has Upsides and Downsides.

Litecoin should be interesting, even if X11 is not that GPU resistant would mean that manufacturers will be discouraged from making ASICS for it, since Litecoin would just switch again. A GPU does have respectable amount of computing power, so if one was to design an algorithm for executing which GPU would be a perfect platform, gainst in performance achieved by ASIC's would be negligible, and thus the network could not be hijacked even if malicious entity would be willing to design their own chips (highly improbably)

Dude to all of the above X11 is a step in the right direction, thus i support this.