The Federal Reserve appoints Xbox CEO Asha Sharma to a new task force focused on productivity and jobs, with the Fed saying the effort supports its goals of price stability and maximum employment. The task force is set to assess the economic impact of new general-purpose technologies, including artificial intelligence, to inform monetary policy decisions. Sharma is named as one of the participants, joining billionaire investor Marc Andreessen and economics professor Charles I. Jones, who is on leave from Stanford to work with Anthropic.
The appointment comes days after Sharma led a major restructuring at Xbox that included large-scale layoffs and studio and game cancellations. Several outlets describe layoffs totaling about 1,600–3,200 jobs depending on the figure referenced, alongside additional planned cuts. The Fed also announces other task forces addressing topics such as communications, evaluation of costs and benefits, data quality and timeliness, and how the central bank tracks and responds to inflation. The Fed states the new groups will operate independently and base their work on evidence, providing feedback and producing findings.
