Supreme Court nominee, Justice Kweku Tawiah Ackaah-Boafo, has made a strong case for Ghana’s Judiciary to embrace artificial intelligence (AI) literacy, stressing its relevance to the future of legal practice.
He made the remarks during his vetting before Parliament’s Appointments Committee, where he addressed the growing global integration of AI in the justice system.
“I will highly recommend the Judiciary to be AI literate. The Judiciary in Ghana must endeavour to make the Judiciary AI literate because that is the new trend,” Justice Ackaah-Boafo stated.
He, however, issued a note of caution about the risks involved in engaging AI without the appropriate understanding or regulatory safeguards. According to him, AI must be approached with both enthusiasm and responsibility.
“We need to be very careful engaging this because if we are all literate and [understand] how it operates, then we are on the front-end and we will be able to know the dangers associated with this,” he explained.
Justice Ackaah-Boafo drew attention to how countries such as Canada and the United Kingdom have already implemented AI guidelines for judges, providing frameworks that help the judiciary navigate emerging legal complexities introduced by the use of AI.
“Many countries like Canada and the U.K. have guidelines for judges, and so while I recommend that AI literacy should be embraced by the judiciary, we will be required to have guidelines to guide judges so that when lawyers have filed the processes with hallucinations, we will be able to know it and address it,” he added.
