Xbox chief Asha Sharma has been appointed as an external adviser to the US Federal Reserve, where she will help lead a task force on productivity and jobs — including assessing the impact of AI on the workforce. The appointment has drawn attention because it comes just days after Sharma oversaw a restructuring of Xbox that resulted in around 3,200 job losses, an irony the article highlights given her new remit relates to employment.

Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh named Sharma among a group of external advisers tasked with improving the efficiency of the Fed's operations and producing "rigorous findings" for the Federal Open Market Committee, with progress to be posted periodically online. She is notably the only sitting executive named, appearing alongside venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, Stanford economist Charles I. Jones (currently on leave at Anthropic), and former Walmart CEO Doug McMillon, who joins a separate data-focused group. The piece notes Sharma's extensive AI background — she previously led Microsoft's CoreAI division and held senior product roles at Meta — and questions whether her Xbox "reset" approach might inform her Fed advice.