Justice Edward Amoako Asante, a nominee for appointment to the Supreme Court, has rejected suggestions that artificial intelligence could eventually replace lawyers or judges.

According to him, although AI has the potential to significantly transform legal practice by assisting with research, contract reviews and other routine tasks, it cannot replicate the unique reasoning and judgment of the human mind.

Appearing before Parliament’s Appointments Committee on Thursday, August 27, Justice Asante said lawyers must still scrutinise and validate information generated by AI before relying on it.

“AI cannot replace, for me, cannot replace lawyers or judges. The human thinking is unique,” he said.

He explained that AI could support legal professionals by processing information and producing research, but users must continuously query and refine its responses to obtain useful results.

“You have to query it. To get the best out of it, you have to query it several times before you get even what you want,” he stated.

Justice Asante cautioned that AI-generated information should not be accepted without verification, citing instances where lawyers had relied on inaccurate AI-generated legal authorities and subsequently faced consequences.

He said the technology should instead be developed and tailored to the specific needs of institutions.

Justice Asante suggested that, for Ghana’s legal system, relevant laws and court cases could be incorporated into a properly trained AI system to enable it to provide more useful and context-specific assistance to lawyers and judges.

He nevertheless stressed that even with such systems, human professionals would remain responsible for reviewing and approving the information produced.

He added that the effectiveness of AI ultimately depends on how it is used, warning that some lawyers could become overly dependent on the technology.

“For me, AI cannot replace lawyers or judges. But some lawyers may want it to replace them. Maybe they are lazy, they don’t want to think. That may be an issue,” he said.

Justice Asante’s comments were in response to a question on whether artificial intelligence could eventually replace human lawyers and judges, rather than merely assisting with routine legal work such as research and contract review.