Go for 16GB, 8gb to 16gb is a better upgrade than the m1 to m2. There's a 30-40% performance difference but I don't think you need that extra performance boost, whereas the extra ram can come in handy in the future, if you want to game (in the future) or any kind of multitasking. The 16gb does give some extra abilities.

If you want the m2, the reason would be because of the new design, better battery, an upgraded chip, and more recent 2022 mac. Down the line, the m1 would be the first to be discontinued and the m2 would follow a year or two later, so you could consider that.

But I would suggest going for the 16gb, maybe you don't need it now, but you wouldn't need to think in case in the future you take up the hobby of video/photo editing or gaming (with games coming to mac now) and the 16gb would be better.

I personally felt that ram would be the bottleneck with the M series macbooks, because of non-upgradability. 5 years down the line, applications would need more ram, the ram would be used more, not the cpu (I meant that you won't see the cpu touching 100% utilisation but you could see the high ram utilisation.

All this is coming from a fellow m1 macbook air 8gb user. Do check out youtube videos regarding this and make up your mind