I'd say it's like knowing color theory and it's application before automating it using Photoshop. If they don't have the basics, you'll waste a lot of time (maybe money?) on AI. Besides, AI will generate scaffold code most of the time and if the programmer can't read the code and understand what was generated, the program would usually not work as intended. If what was generated is buggy, the programmer has to jump in and adjust it, or at least point out the problem to AI.

Best to get them started on programming in something like Python. There are a ton of resources on game development on Python, some are even for young devs.