I know almost nothing about AI, but I would want to learn the basics first so I would be able to make an informed hardware purchase. I’m playing with CoPilot on my 2020 iPP so it would probably run OK on your existing hardware. Just don’t tell your AI girlfriend all of your deep dark secrets. 
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My 2019 MBA may be close to toes up. I looked at both and figured (after threatening it with my hardware savvy husband and his tools) that since it finally decided to reboot normally I’ll wait a while longer. I was leaning towards MBP though. I like and use external monitors with my MBA and it’s a case of dongles that fail rather frequently.
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My experience of running Stable Diffusion image generation and Whisper transcription on an M1 MacBook Pro (that’s the slowest ever M chip) with only 16 GB of RAM suggests it is eminently doable. Slower than it could be? Probably. But the only thing that routinely stresses my system is video transcode.
Also, I have done both of those AI-driven tasks without closing any of my usual apps, so there would have been multiple tabs in Safari, Slack, Ivory, MimeStream and more.
The real kicker is multi-monitor support. I believe it’s doable with some USB trickery, but I don’t know the ins and outs of that.
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If you can avoid a kludge with some kind of dongle, do. Even good add ons are never as good as system hardware.
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My thoughts are that with AI, you want to do your best to future-proof the expense. Apple will heighten the neural engine speed and capabilities for sure. But, that is always the situation (heighten neural, chip, and ram) for each generation. I will go MacBook Pro for your case, plus you get all the bonus features of the Pro. What you “can” do with the Air will have much less fiction (and remorse) with the Pro.
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I recently saw a first hand reaction from someone who uses a piece of photographic software that heavily utilises the Neural Engine. They upgraded from an M1 Max Mac Studio to an M3 Pro MacBook Pro and were worried about relative performance with the CPU step down…
That’s the 60% advance in Neural Engine core speed for you. You still have to buy a very high end Mac (with Ultra) to get any more than the 16 cores I got with my 1st generation M1 ‘amatuer’, but boy howdy, have they boosted those cores.
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Well, that’s me satisfied. I’m trying to cull my tech as well as make a purchase to future proof myself.
I have an M1 MacBook Air (8/512) and a Mac Mini (16/512).
I think I’d be better off with one device so will sell/trade those and get a MacBook Pro with “as much RAM as I can afford.”.
This is one of the better rationalizations I’ve ever read for spending a bunch of money on an upgrade! Way to go! 
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Aaaaaaand that’s done.
15-inch MacBook Air with M3 chip - Space Gray
- 2TB SSD storage
- 24GB unified memory
Arrives March 29-April 2. Seems like a long time to wait!
I was trying to put it off a while longer but it seems like I’m at the point with my 2018 MacBook Pro (my only computer) where it could fail any minute now, leaving me possibly unable to finish work on a deadline. Better to do it now while the timing is under my control. And besides with the MacBook Airs recently upgraded, now seems like the best time to buy for the next year or two!
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I’m jealous. Going from a 2018 MBP to an M3 MacBook Air is like time traveling 100 years into the future.
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I replaced my 2014 iMac with a fully specced M1 MacBook Pro when they came out, and this is my ‘desktop’ machine. However its too heavy for a travel machine and my 2015 12" MacBook was running like treacle on a recent trip, so I have gone for a new M3 13" MacBook Air and am loving it so far. It should cope well with Lightroom on photo trips
For 30 years as a tech journalist, I went to a lot of conferences, and spent a lot of time on my feet with a computer bag slung over my shoulder. My trick for lightening up my load when traveling was to actually pack more — in my final months of frequent business travel, in late 2019, I started packing an iPad with keyboard on trips, in addition to the MacBook Pro. I’d leave the MBP in the hotel room and use the iPad with keyboard all day. It was an excellent solution!
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New MacBook Air arrived today. I have been using it for about 10 minutes:
- Holy cow, this thing is fast compared with my 2018 MacBook Pro. I did a thing where I open 30+ tabs simultaneously. Took a couple of minutes on the MBP, but is virtually instantaneous on the MBA.
The Migration Assistant seems to have worked flawlessly. I had to authenticate and give permission for a few things, but that only took about a minute. - Unexpected benefit: With a 15" built-in display, I now have a usable second display for my desk. Previously, the 13" display wasn’t usable when on my desktop, except under limited circumstances. I hadn’t considered that when I decided on 15".
- Hmmm… I hope this thing fits into my favorite computer bag. If not—MOAR shopping!
- I can switch back to Safari from Vivaldi now, but I don’t know if I will. I’ve come to like Vivaldi.
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Explain? I thought the only difference was screen size and resolution.
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I have the same question. No doubt a 15 is better as a second or third desktop display, but I’ve used a 13 that way and found it usable and useful.
Are you planning on doing much video production? I’m deciding between M3 Air and MBP M3 “Pro”. Obviously the Pro will be better but how much better for the AUD700 premium?
@tomalmy @Synchronicity I found the 13" display was too small to be useful when positioned on my desk next to the 27" external display, except in limited circumstances. The 15" display seems to be large enough that I can use it more often.
@Bill_Aus I do not plan to do video production.
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I felt that when getting an M1 MBP to replace my 2012 MBP last summer! Incredible machine.
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That’s an 11-year difference. Impressive! Was the 2012 MBP your primary machine?
No, that would be my 2012 iMac! And that’s still technically my primary machine (i.e., the one with all of my data, music, device syncs, etc on it), though I’m starting to feel like it might be time to modernize the “home base” system as well. There might be an M-series Mac Mini in my near-ish future…
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