Justice Kweku Tawiah Ackaah-Boafo, a Supreme Court nominee, has emphasized the need for the Ghanaian Judiciary to become literate in artificial intelligence (AI) to keep pace with global trends in legal practice. However, he also stressed the importance of establishing clear guidelines to prevent abuse.
Speaking during his vetting before Parliament’s Appointments Committee, Justice Ackaah-Boafo said:
“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.”
He cautioned that the adoption of AI tools in judicial processes requires caution, citing the need for guidelines to guide judges. He pointed to Canada and the UK as examples of jurisdictions that have already implemented AI guidelines for judges.
“We need to be very careful engaging this because if we are all literate and as to how it operates, then we are on the front-end and then we will be able to know the dangers associated with this,” he stated.
Justice Ackaah-Boafo added:
“Many countries like Canada and the U.K. have guidelines for judges, and so while I recommend that A.I literacy should be embraced by the judiciary, then 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.”
