The United States central bank, the Federal Reserve, has announced new task forces to “advance the conduct of monetary policy,” and its board has chosen Xbox CEO Asha Sharma to help guide one task force pertaining to AI, as part of a wider effort to help create jobs and keep prices stable.
The new Productivity and Jobs task force will look into the “economic impact of new general-purpose technologies,” including AI, to help the Fed make better policy decisions. Sharma is joined on this task force by billionaire businessman and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, along with Stanford University economics professor Charles I. Jones–he is currently on leave from the university to become a scholar-in-residence at the AI company Anthropic.
Fed chairman Kevin Warsh said the new task forces are part of the group’s “commitment to price stability and maximum employment.”
Sharma, for her part, recently oversaw huge Xbox price hikes and mass layoffs at Xbox that people reacted negatively to. In fact, the sentiment around Xbox these days is at a low point in recent years due to Sharma’s decisions.
On the AI part, Sharma, 37, comes from an AI background at Microsoft. She has promised no “soulless AI slop” at Xbox under her leadership, and she has canceled some AI plans for Xbox already.
The Fed’s new task forces will “operate independently,” the Fed said. They will attempt to “follow the evidence, provide candid feedback, and produce rigorous findings.”
The other task forces include ones dedicated to improving the Fed’s communications, examining costs and benefits generally, bettering the quality and timeliness of key economic data points, and revisiting how the Fed tracks and reacts to inflation.
The Xbox “reset” that was announced this week included 1,600 Xbox layoffs, with 1,600 more to come. Microsoft also got rid of five studios and canceled games, including Avowed 2. This was all done because Sharma said the Xbox business was not healthy and was in need of major changes.
