The Deam Hotel by Laila Lalami

I really liked this. It is a combination of what the extreme of AI might be as well as pushing the limits on what is going on with ICE in the United States--that heavily armed men are covering their faces, not wearing badges and snatching people off the street without any accountability and disappearing them. The later is happening and the former is a what if scenario. Sara Hussein 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. This isn’t punishment but risk management, for anybody considered likely to commit a crime. 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. The author owes a lot to it being 2025 in America, where this all seems quite possible. The Secretary of Health and Human Services wants to eliminate vaccinations, obliterate health research, and put a tracking device on everyone, so it is just a hop, skip, and a jump to locking up people for their thoughts.