Imagining the Future: AI Policing and Capital Surveillance in Laila Lalami’s the Dream Hotel

In contemporary dystopian fiction, overt authoritarian violence has given way to more subdued, bureaucratic forms of control. The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami depicts a near future in which surveillance capitalism, artificial intelligence, and predictive algorithms influence daily existence. The book, which is set in Los Angeles in the 2040s, depicts a society where freedom is only granted under certain conditions, dreams are tracked, and risks are measured through ones digital footprints.This article examines how The Dream Hotel depicts capital surveillance and AI policing as intertwined systems that control mobility, bodies, and minds. The study explores how algorithmic governance, while portraying itself as impartial and effective, reproduces earlier forms of racialized and gendered control by heavily referencing the novel's narrative details, characters, and institutional spaces. By foregrounding the surveillance of dreams and interior life, Lalami exposes the psychological reach of future policing systems. Ultimately, the novel suggests that the most dangerous forms of surveillance are those that operate through comfort, care, and economic logic rather than force, making dystopia feel not distant, but familiar.