In a bid to provide legal guidance to people across Uganda through leveraging cutting- edge technology, on the 17th March, BarefootLaw (BFL) launched Winnie 2.0 which is the hybrid version of our previous Artificial Intelligence (A.I) Legal Assistant Winnie 1.0.
When we receive legal questions through Facebook, SMS and emails, version 2.0 allows our legal team to respond more efficiently and accurately by retrieving historical answers to similar questions asked on the assumption that the final answer chosen by our lawyers would be the best one possible.
The Secretary General to the Commonwealth Patricia Scotland graced the launch of Winnie 2.0. Her message was themed around inclusiveness, “Justice has to be tasted, touched and felt by all of us and if there’s one person whose left behind then we have to understand we are left behind.”
In his opening remarks, BFL’s Executive Director Gerald Abila shared his difficult journey in finding like-minded people to collaborate and create the initial version of Winnie, a journey which especially entailed racial disparities that spur across the globe. The spirit of resilience finally landed a collaboration with Imperial College Business School and Winnie slowly came to life. “With the platform the Commonwealth provides, there’s a chance to champion and scale the equitable distribution of the benefits of new and emerging innovations similar to BFL’s venture all while meeting SDG16, leveraging the benefits that technology provides,” Gerald shared. We look forward to working with the Commonwealth in realising these goals.
Winnie 2.0 is here to increase the rate at which people access quality legal information though the BFL Tools. This however raises the need to balance out the injustice we will face in the near future, between people those that have access to new technologies and those that do not. “Unfortunately, those that do not are from one side of the world and are the most vulnerable, I almost gave up and wonder how many communities have lost out because of giving up”, Gerald reflected.
In her final remarks, the Secretary General encouraged the team to continue making access to justice readily available, “What you have done is not just instrumentally changing the lives of Ugandans, but I anticipate you’ll change the lives of the 2.5 billion people within our commonwealth sphere.”