The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami review – what if AI could read our minds?
Longlisted for the Women’s prize, this powerful dystopian novel explores a future where people are imprisoned based on their potential to commit crimes. Sara Hussein, a museum archivist, is unexpectedly detained at Los Angeles international airport due to an irregularity flagged by the state's AI security system. Despite her seemingly ordinary life, Sara finds herself sent to a women's retention center where her fate is controlled by her guards. As she navigates this new reality, Sara must confront the injustice of a system that judges her based on algorithms and arbitrary criteria.
Arriving home at Los Angeles International Airport, Sara Hussein is asked by immigration and customs officers to step aside, then taken to an interview room. The fundamentals of this scene are familiar – you’ve probably watched something like it in a film, or dreamed about it happening to you; perhaps it already has.
But Sara lives in a new world, several decades in the future, and she is being arrested because Scout, the state’s AI security system, has flagged something irregular inside her mind. Sara seems unexceptional: she’s a museum archivist, married and mother to young twins. She once had an argument with her husband Elias after he impulsively part-exchanged the family Toyota for a Volvo. Sara sees herself as a person who “couldn’t possibly be considered a member of the lawbreaking classes”, until the moment at the airport when an officer informs her that her “risk score” is too high, and sends her to Madison, a California women’s retention center housed in a former elementary school.
At Madison, a record of good behavior will lower her score; however, this record lies in the hands of her guards. She is not sufficiently subordinate, and can’t get her number down. “Retainees” are held initially for 21 days, then on a rolling basis, potentially forever. This isn’t punishment but risk management, for anybody considered likely to commit a crime.
The Dream Hotel: Exploring AI and Society
Every citizen has a risk score, extrapolated via algorithm from personal cloud data, from surveillance networks, and from the Dreamsaver – a widely used skull implant that delivers more restful sleep. The small print of Dreamsaver Inc grants the company rights to share the user’s dreams with the government. People are OK with this; it seems to have reduced terrorism.
Laila Lalami’s fifth novel, The Dream Hotel, has been longlisted for the Women’s Prize. Her work draws on her experiences as a Moroccan American to examine the country’s two-tier system and how rights and freedoms are exercised differently across race, class, gender, and national origin. Lalami’s fiction explores these differences across various times and places.
In The Dream Hotel, Lalami envisions how AI could integrate into the two-tier system she has portrayed in earlier works. Sara contrasts the apparent neutrality of Scout’s “new era of digital policing” with the racist treatment her Moroccan immigrant parents endured at U.S. airports during her childhood. However, familiar prejudices seep into new tools, which search for specific deviations from an enforced norm.
The Impact of AI on Society and Individuals
Sara’s medical notes link to a record documenting that she was the victim of sexual assault at 19, adding three points to her risk score. Reading The Dream Hotel is a physical experience, inducing a strong sense of powerlessness and frustration. Lalami’s AI renders users simultaneously smarter and more ignorant, misunderstanding vast quantities of data it collects.
Retainees’ hearings are deferred randomly, visits denied, phone calls cut off and overcharged, privacies invaded. Sara gradually accepts her status as someone the state can punish. In a world of confusion and upheaval caused by AI, personal lives, relationships, and thoughts are deeply affected.
Concluding Thoughts
The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami presents a sharp, sophisticated novel that explores the consequences of AI integration into society. It delves into the complexities of imprisonment and a two-tier system, leaving characters and readers alike bewildered by the unfolding events. The burning quality of the novel lies in its compelling narrative and the profound insights it offers into the impact of technology on individuals and society.