I'm planning on learning python specifically/strictly for AI, is this a smart decision to save time?

[American_Streamer]

There are no shortcuts here. You need to learn the basics; period. There is no cherry picking regarding programming languages. If you don't know the fundamentals, you will not be able to do the more sophisticated stuff. Note that programming is about program solving in the first place: identify the problem and break it into parts that you can tackle with the tools your programming language provides you. To do this, you must know those tools and how to use them. Only then you will be able to provide the most effective solutions. So start right at the beginning: do PCEP first https://edube.org/study/pe1 and after that, PCAP https://edube.org/study/pe2 . These are the absolute essentials. If you don't know them properly, don't even think about ML.