Professor of Practice Federal University Oye Ekiti(FUOYE), Ekiti State and Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), Malam Yusuf Olaolu Ali, has made good his pledge to deploy his field experience to teaching law students at the FUOYE as he turned up last week in their lecture room to teach the students.
Ali, who was recently awarded Professor of Law Practice by FUOYE, was physically in the classroom where he taught the students, Jurisprudence (Definition and Scopes).
Prof Ali began his teaching at about 11 a.m. and ended it at exactly 2 p.m, lasting exactly 3 hours, during which he brought in a number of teaching aids, including a recorded music of the late Afro beat, Feal Kuti on human rights to illustrate Human Rights Jurisprudence and also the impeachment trial of ex-Oyo State Governor, Rasidi Ladoja to illustrate Historical Jurisprudence.
Speaking during the class which was very interactive and participatory because students were interjecting to make contributions, Prof Ali disclosed that he decided to be physically present, instead of having the lecture online, to make the students have a true and real feeling of what he called “live teaching with life.”
In a chatt with FUOYENews, the Professor tasked members of the legal profession worldwide, including academia to braze up for the emerging challenges and fallouts from Artificial Intelligence (AI) as related to the legal profession, especially unintended weaknesses or adverse consequences from its deployment.
Besides, Malam Yusuf Olaolu Ali identified AI jurisprudence as one of the latest areas of study in that branch of the law profession. This is just as FUOYE Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Abayomi Sunday Fasina underscored the strategic nexus between law practice and academic excellence among law students, during his commendatory remarks at the lecture where he delightedly noted that the students had been more enriched by the invaluable field experience the distinguished lawyer had embedded in what he classified as teaching.
Elated Prof.Fasina noted that “the success of the interaction of wig and the classroom has made a synergy of this nature very imperative and compelling for grooming law students in our universities, this is an experiment we are proud to have initiated in our determination to poach on knowledge all over the world for the benefits of our students.”
To buttress his call for the legal profession to prepare for unintended consequences arising from the deployment of AI, the seasoned lawyer cited as an example error that may occur from an incident where robot was assigned to carry out surgery on a patient.
According to him, “who is accountable or who will bear the blame or cost?”Also, he made further reference to what happened in China during COVID-19 when robots were deployed to serving prisoners food because of fear of contracting the epidemic through human contacts.In his view if accident occurred in the process, how would law handle it?
Another area of AI and its legal challenges which he enjoined the profession to focus on was the unintended invasion of the privacy of individuals when the tech is legitimately deployed for legitimate purposes or for general public-good.
To the law students, Prof. Ali drew their attention to the dynamic and fluid nature of some areas in jurisprudence such as biotech, feminist and sociological jurisprudence, which according to him, would continue to task and test the capacity of laws to address certain human and societal challenges.He made reference to the controversy surrounding the issue of consent before arguing that whether a free consent devoid of duress would be said to have been validly obtained from a dying or distressed patient for surgery for example.
At the end of the class, the SAN, who had earlier told the students that subsequent classes would be online, however in response to the plea from the Vice-Chancellor for more physical classes in the light of the richness of the day’s experience, gave assurance to review the decision.
