The objection isn't to the notion that "One can benefit from knowing fundamentals of an adjacent field". It's that this is "The bare minimum every developer must know". That's a much, much stronger claim.
I've come to see this sort of clickbait headline as playing on the prevalence of imposter-syndrome insecurity among devs, and try to ignore them on general principle.
Fair enough! I can kind of see the point that, if every developer knew some basics, it would help them make good decisions about their own projects, even if the answer is "no, this doesn't need ML". On the other hand, you're of course right that if you don't use ML, then it's clearly not something you "must" know to do your job well.
I've come to see this sort of clickbait headline as playing on the prevalence of imposter-syndrome insecurity among devs, and try to ignore them on general principle.