Xbox CEO Asha Sharma tapped to advise Federal Reserve on AI's economic impact days after 3,200 layoffs

Days after announcing mass layoffs, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma tapped to advise the Federal Reserve on jobs - Engadget

The US Federal Reserve has announced the industry leaders who will head up its various task forces guiding monetary policies. The country's central bank has made some baffling appointments to its productivity and jobs team, which will "Assess the economic impact of new general-purpose technologies, including artificial intelligence, to inform the Federal Reserve's policy judgments." One of the advisors will be new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma. After moving to gaming from Microsoft's Core AI group, in the first few months of her tenure, she's overseen yet another price hike for the gaming hardware and most recently announced to the company that it would be cutting 3,200 jobs across its studios. Microsoft has been gutting its staff across many divisions for awhile, so this isn't a new policy she's personally brought in. But the timing here could not be worse, especially as so much of the game industry is struggling to keep people employed and to figure out a responsible way to use AI. Joining her in this strange advisory trio are Marc Andreessen, who doesn't have the best track record on talking intelligently about AI, and Charles I. Jones, a Stanford University economics professor who is currently on leave to work at the Anthropic Institute. Jones aside, it's not necessarily the most reassuring group when it comes to being critical of artificial intelligence and the job market.

Xbox CEO Will Advise Federal Reserve On Jobs After Mass Layoffs

The group will 'assess the economic impact of new general-purpose technologies' like AI The Federal Reserve has just announced a bunch of new task forces staffed by private sector leaders to help advise it on modern trends in the economy. Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has been named to one of those groups to help advise the U.S. Fed on "jobs and productivity," including how the emergence of AI technology is impacting them. Her new side gig was revealed just days after instituting roughly 3,200 layoffs that will roll out across Microsoft's gaming division over the next 12 months. "The Federal Reserve's commitment to price stability and maximum employment is unwavering. As is our resolve to pursue our mandate with rigor," Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh said in a press release on July 9. "The U.S. 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. The goal is straightforward: to ensure the Fed is best positioned to achieve our objectives in this consequential time." Sharma's task force has been asked to "assess the economic impact of new general-purpose technologies, including artificial intelligence, to inform the Federal Reserve's policy judgments." She's not doing it alone, however. Working alongside her is Charles I. Jones, an economist at Stanford University who works with the AI company Anthropic, and venture capital ghoul Marc Andreessen of Andreessen Horowitz. You might know Andreessen as the cone-headed co-founder of early web browsers who has parlayed his Silicon Valley tech fortune into a venture capital fund that leaves him with plenty of time to go on podcasts and talk proudly about having "zero" introspection in his life. I'm so glad he now has the direct ear of the nation's central banking system. Sharma is also from the startup world, having worked at Instacart and Meta before joining Microsoft's Core AI group. She was moved over to Xbox earlier this year and has moved fast to try and turn around a struggling gaming division. The result has been brutal cuts across the organization, including to senior staff who have been at Xbox and its game studios for decades. "We know that great technology gets better when it gets simpler, not bigger," she told staff in a memo this week. Today, in some parts of the company, work passes through as many as 14 layers of management. Our platform teams are 40% larger than they were at the start of this generation, even as our player base and playtime have declined. That complexity has slowed decisions, blurred accountability, and made it harder to deliver for players. As we reset XBOX, we will simplify."

Xbox CEO Asha Sharma joins US Federal Reserve as adviser on AI for "productivity and jobs" taskforce

Sharma will be part of a taskforce to "assess the economic impact of new general-purpose technologies, including artificial intelligence" Recently appointed Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has been tapped by the US government to advise the Federal Reserve on matters related to AI and its impact on the economy. Via press release published on an official government website, the Fed details five distinct taskforces, each co-led by a team of "external advisers" "with a mandate to follow the evidence, provide candid feedback, and produce rigorous findings for the Federal Open Market Committee." Essentially, the taskforces will advise the Federal Reserve on economic policy across five different categories: Communications, Balance Sheet Policy, Data, Inflation, and Productivity and Jobs, which is where Sharma has been assigned. The Fed says it chose "accomplished economists, business leaders, and former central bank practitioners -- with deep expertise in their fields," to head up the taskforces. Sharma's team will "assess the economic impact of new general-purpose technologies, including artificial intelligence, to inform the Federal Reserve's policy judgments." Sharma is the only active CEO to join the taskforces, although former Walmart president and CEO Doug McMillion has been named adviser to the Federal Reserve on the data taskforce. This is a peculiar move for Sharma and Xbox for several reasons. For one, just this week Sharma herself wrote an email to employees announcing mass layoffs at Xbox that will result in 3,200 cut jobs by the end of the 2027 fiscal year amid a major "reset" for the brand which she'll be integral in spearheading. But perhaps even more chiefly, Sharma has been the CEO of one of the largest gaming companies in the world for just a few short months and she's been making big moves. It's surprising she has the time, much less the mental space, to help out the federal government with its economic policy. Before she was CEO at Xbox, Sharma was president of Microsoft's CoreAI product group, which is likely where she gained the experience that caught the Fed's attention.

Xbox CEO Asha Sharma Is Advising the Federal Reserve on the Economic Impact of AI as Part of a 'Productivity and Jobs' Taskforce

The Federal Reserve has called on Xbox CEO Asha Sharma to help it assess the economic impact of new technologies, including AI, as part of a 'Productivity and Jobs' taskforce. Sharma, who previously worked at Microsoft's Core AI group before replacing Phil Spencer as boss of the company's gaming business earlier this year, joins Marc Andreessen, co-founder and general partner, Andreessen Horowitz, and Charles I. Jones, professor of economics, Stanford University, currently on leave at Anthropic, on the taskforce. The announcement of Sharma's appointment to the task force comes just days after she began a restructure of the Xbox business, which included 1,600 staff losing their jobs on Monday, and another 1,600 to be cut over the course of the current financial year. Four Xbox studios have left Microsoft so far. Projects have been canceled, and iconic developers have been gutted. The impact of AI on tech jobs in particular is well-documented, and Microsoft itself is all in on AI. However one of Sharma's first moves as boss of Xbox was to kill Microsoft's AI tool Copilot for gaming. Still, she has said she believes in AI, pointing to neural rendering as benefiting video game graphics. Sharma did not specifically mention AI as part of her "Reset" memo, nor was it mentioned when she announced the Xbox layoffs earlier this week. Rather, Sharma's plan for Xbox appears to revolve around increased profit growth through a focus on the company's biggest franchises, such as Halo, Minecraft, Candy Crush, Fallout, and The Elder Scrolls. Where this leaves smaller Xbox franchises remains to be seen. "We know that great technology gets better when it gets simpler, not bigger," Sharma said in her statement. "Today, in some parts of the company, work passes through as many as 14 layers of management. Our platform teams are 40% larger than they were at the start of this generation, even as our player base and playtime have declined. That complexity has slowed decisions, blurred accountability, and made it harder to deliver for players. As we reset Xbox, we will simplify. "We will reduce management layers to no more than five, and where possible, three. We will deliver success through a flatter organization that is built around makers (individual contributors focused on building), player-coaches (leaders who remain deeply involved in the work while developing their teams), and directly responsible individuals (DRIs) who own key decisions and outcomes. And we will streamline how we work across our tools, with a cleaner code base, shared services, and 50% reduced vendor spend." "The Federal Reserve's commitment to price stability and maximum employment is unwavering. As is our resolve to pursue our mandate with rigor," said Chairman Kevin Warsh. "The U.S. 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. The goal is straightforward: to ensure the Fed is best positioned to achieve our objectives in this consequential time." Image credit: Microsoft. Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].