Xbox CEO Asha Sharma has been appointed to a Federal Reserve taskforce called 'Productivity and Jobs' to help assess the economic impact of new technologies, including AI. She joins Marc Andreessen and Stanford economics professor Charles I. Jones on the taskforce. The announcement comes shortly after Sharma began a restructure of Xbox that included 1,600 staff losing their jobs, with another 1,600 to be cut over the current financial year. Four Xbox studios have left Microsoft, projects have been canceled, and iconic developers have been gutted. Sharma's plan for Xbox, outlined in a "Reset" memo, focuses on increased profit growth through the company's biggest franchises like Halo, Minecraft, and Fallout, and simplifying the organization by reducing management layers. While she has said she believes in AI, pointing to neural rendering for graphics, she did not mention AI in her memo or layoff announcement. Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh stated that the taskforce will consider whether policymakers' tools and approaches can be improved upon to ensure the Fed is best positioned to achieve its objectives.
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