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 she instituted 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 to 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.”