After spearheading a restructuring of Xbox that resulted in 3200 job losses, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has been asked to be an advisor to the US Federal Reserve for Productivity and Jobs, where she will seemingly lead a task force related to, ironically, employment.
She will join the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve -the body charged with the implementation of United States monetary policy -as part of a group formed to improve the efficiency of the Federal Reserve’s operations. One of her duties is to assess the impact of AI on the workforce.
Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh named her as one of the “external advisers” in a press release, noting she will have “a mandate to follow the evidence, provide candid feedback, and produce rigorous findings for the Federal Open Market Committee”. The Fed notes that we can follow the task forces’ progress via updates “posted periodically” on its website.
Notably, Sharma is the only acting executive in the named candidates; she appears alongside the likes of Marc Andreessen (a Silicon Valley venture capitalist who has sunk a lot of money into AI and has some questionable opinions about how LLMs can be used and deployed in the future), and Stanford economics professor Charles I. Jones (who is “currently on leave at Anthropic”). Former CEO of Walmart, Doug McMillon, will join a different group looking primarily at data. Thanks to PC Gamer for some of this context.
“The Federal Reserve’s commitment to price stability and maximum employment is unwavering, as is our resolve to pursue our mandate with rigor,” explained Warsh in the press release.. “The US economy has changed significantly over the last generation, and never more so than right now. Each task force will carefully consider whether policymakers’ means and methods, analytical tools, and policy approaches can be improved upon. I am honored that the best minds from a range of disciplines have agreed to work with us to sharpen our performance as an institution.”
Sharma, if you needed a reminder, has overseen Xbox’s ‘reset’ which, at the time of writing, has seen storied studios gutted, veteran talent ousted, Game Pass numbers drop, live service studios hobbled, multiple first-party studios sold or consolidated, and left morale at rock bottom in studios working on Xbox’s most important upcoming games. To see her take an advisory role as part of a government committee is no doubt going to raise a few eyebrows – both inside Xbox and outside.
What’s more, Sharma has a long history working in AI. Before leading Xbox, Sharma was president of Microsoft’s CoreAI division. And prior to that she was at Meta, as vice president of product & engineering for Messenger and Instagram Direct, so she clearly has connections amongst the Silicon Valley elite. Will her advice to the Federal Reserve draw from her time working with AI? Is the ‘reset’ tactic she’s been so fond of at Xbox something she’ll look to implement elsewhere? We will keep our eyes on those promised Federal Reserve updates to learn more.
