Ok but what is an actually good solution to the whole AI art debacle?
If you only use your computer for the most basic of operations (browsing the Internet, watching Netflix, writing documents, etc.), Chromebooks are fine. However, I'm assuming this discussion is about laptops versus desktops.
Basically, all you need to care about between laptops and desktops is the balance between portability, power, and affordability. If you travel a lot, get a laptop. If you need the processing power for video editing or gaming, get a desktop. If you need to edit videos while traveling, get a gaming laptop. If you don't need any of those, get a second-hand Dell desktop.
If you need to use a laptop but hate the keyboard and trackpad, nothing is stopping you from chucking a separate mechanical keyboard and a mouse into your backpack. A lot of people in tech actually just do that.
Here are the apps I've used for Lemmy on Android!
- Liftoff - my current app of choice. It's very fast, supports the gestures I need, and while it lacks a bit in appearance customization, it makes up for it in speed and features.
- Connect - I originally wrote it off due to the inability to disable swipe gestures, though I tried to switch back to it after that feature was added. It's now a very pleasant experience, with a lot of customization! The only downside is that it is still slower than Liftoff at the moment.
- Jerboa - decent, but buggy.
- Lemmotif - no features, no logins, no customization, no posting, no nothing; just pure, blazingly fast, Lemmy doomscrolling.
Universal basic income.
EDIT: I feel I need to clarify this stance. I'm a game developer, and I'm also sometimes an artist. I've been in discussions with my artist friends and they're of the belief that AI is the enemy. I don't believe that, but I also don't blame them; artists' careers are being displaced by AI, so of course they are justified in directing their anger at the immediate threat to their livelihoods. As for the ethical/legal quandary about AI art models being trained on publicly-available copyrighted images, well, I think that's more of a grey area that I should not delve into right now.
AI art is inevitable, and there is no feasible way to slow it down, let alone stop it; even if the developed Western world decide unanimously to ban AI art, black markets for AI art models would still exist, and it would give Eastern countries (okay, mainly just China) the opportunity to really corner the market and further develop that technology for (nef)various purposes.
Every industry succumbs to automation sooner or later. I mean, it makes perfect economic sense to adopt automation to replace the existing workforce; robots don't need to get paid. However, normally, when automation is introduced into an industry, the pace at which that technology is developed and implemented is slow enough for displaced workers to be able to learn new trades and pick up new careers before they, well, go broke.
The issue is that in this era of information, this AI technology is developing far too fast for that to happen, and couple that with the ever-increasing greed in today's capitalism that ensures workers (including artists) are working long hours and are being paid barely enough to survive; they don't have the time, energy, or funds to learn new trades or adapt to other creative endeavours that haven't been taken over by AI yet.
We need a return to an era where art is not a method of livelihood, but rather an admired craft, simply for the purposes of art; that also comes with the extra bonus of lowering the worth of AI art. For all that to be possible, artists first need a way to stop worrying about having to make money to be able to afford food and housing.
That's where UBI comes in. Again, capitalism, the richest 1% hoarding 50% of the world's wealth, yada yada, just tax those rich fucks and give that money to everyone; boom, UBI. Once artists (and workers in general) no longer have that threat of starvation, 1. they can take all the time they need/want to learn new crafts and careers, 2. they can force corporations to offer workers better treatment and pay, especially when they can afford to quit toxic work environments.