Cultivating Empathy in the Age of AI: Technical Editing Pedagogy and the Ethics of Care

This article examines generative AI’s affordances and limitations in technical editing through a care ethics framework. Using collaborative autoethnography, one instructor and four undergraduate students reflect on navigating care, GenAI, and author–editor relationships in a technical editing course. Findings suggest that GenAI can support novice editors as a communication tool but falls short of enacting the relational, context-sensitive care ethical editing demands. We call for editing pedagogy that foregrounds care alongside critical engagement with technologies.