Xbox hatchetwoman & CEO tapped by Federal Reserve for 'jobs & productivity' task force

Asha Sharma presided over the layoffs of around 3,200 under the Xbox brand ahead of her appointment as advisor to the US Federal Reserve.

Apparently, spinning off smaller businesses from your main business, and laying off around 3,200 in the process, qualifies you to help out the Federal Reserve these days. Asha Sharma was just appointed an advisor in a Federal Reserve task force on, of all things, jobs and productivity, alongside several other prominent figures.

The Federal Reserve announced its advisory task force and picks in a press release on its website this week. Sharma is joined by Silicon Valley venture capitalist Marc Andreessen and Stanford economics professor Charles I. Jones in the Jobs and Productivity section, which is tasked to “assess the economic impact of new general-purpose technologies, including artificial intelligence, to inform the Federal Reserve's policy judgments.”

Sharma has a background in artificial intelligence, having worked as a leader in Microsoft’s AI divisions before her appointment as Xbox CEO, which is likely a major factor in her inclusion for the task at hand. She has not shied away from AI technology, instead suggesting that players should look at it as a “new category of [video] games.”

It is unfortunate timing, then, that Sharma also just presided over the layoff of 3,200 employees at Microsoft as Xbox reorganized and split off studios (instead of just trying to outright close them as it has done in the past).

It doesn’t seem to matter to the Federal Reserve, which continued through with the announcement following all of those layoffs. As we watch for further updates, stay tuned to the Xbox topic.

Sign up for our monthly roundup of exclusive content, top stories, and updates from Shacknews - once a month, no spam.

Shacknews staff does not use generative artificial intelligence (AI) in their content. Shacknews strictly prohibits the use of its content for AI training or to generate text, including text in the style or format used for this publication. Shacknews reserves all rights to this work.