What if choosing a career became too inefficient to leave entirely to us?

At first, the algorithms simply help. They match applicants with vacancies, identify transferable skills and guide workers towards secure employment. Schools use them to advise pupils. Universities use them to improve graduate outcomes. Governments rely on them to tackle labour shortages and prevent expensive training from going to waste.

Then recommendations begin determining funding. Employers stop seeing applicants the system considers unsuitable. Careers become ranked according to probability, economic need and location. Refusing suitable work carries consequences. Children grow up already knowing which futures the system considers realistic.

No government ever officially abolishes career choice. It does not have to.

Careers Chosen for Us is a speculative future history of how convenience, efficiency and increasingly accurate prediction could transform the freedom to choose what we become into the privilege of choosing among futures already approved for us.