Judiciary must embrace AI literacy but with guidelines – Justice Ackaah-Boafo

upreme Court Judge nominee, Justice Kweku Tawiah Ackaah-Boafo, has called for the Ghanaian Judiciary to become literate in artificial intelligence (AI) as part of efforts to keep pace with global trends in legal practice.

Speaking during his vetting before Parliament’s Appointments Committee, he emphasised the growing influence of AI on legal systems worldwide and the importance of equipping judges with the knowledge to engage it responsibly.

He stressed, however, that the adoption of AI tools in judicial processes must be approached cautiously and guided by clear regulations to prevent abuse.

Justice Ackaah-Boafo pointed to Canada and the UK as examples of jurisdictions that have already implemented AI guidelines for judges.

“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. However, 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.

“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,” he stated.