The use of ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence (AI) by the Ju­di­cia­ry was one of many press­ing is­sues dis­cussed at the just con­clud­ed con­fer­ence of Chief Jus­tices and Heads of Ju­di­cia­ries of the Caribbean.

In his clos­ing re­marks at the end of the three-day con­fer­ence, Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie said while there is much hype around AI tech­nol­o­gy, it can serve as an ad­van­tage for ser­vice de­liv­ery. He added, how­ev­er, that there must be prop­er leg­is­la­tion and dis­clo­sure of its us­age by users.

“The con­sen­sus is that its use is un­avoid­able if we are to re­main rel­e­vant and pro­duc­tive but care has to be tak­en to avoid con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of the de­ci­sion-mak­ing process through al­go­rith­mic bias and oth­er weak­ness­es,” Archie said.

He not­ed sev­er­al oth­er is­sues that were dis­cussed, in­clud­ing chal­lenges and op­por­tu­ni­ties (ev­i­den­tial is­sues and court op­er­a­tions), ju­di­cial in­de­pen­dence and the over­rid­ing ob­jec­tive of cy­ber se­cu­ri­ty.

Archie an­nounced that the in­com­ing chair of the Chief Jus­tices and Heads of Ju­di­cia­ries of the Caribbean com­mit­tee is Chief Jus­tice of Ja­maica Bryan Sykes.

Next year’s con­fer­ence will be held in Ja­maica. —Rhon­dor Dowlat