Definition: Intelligent Software Agent 

Intelligent Software Agent (ISA): A software agent that uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) 
in the pursuit of the goals of its clients. Artificial Intelligence is the imitation of 
human intelligence by mechanical means. Clients, then, can reduce human workload by 
delegating to ISAs tasks that normally would require human-like intelligence. 

Many researchers that formerly referred to their work as AI are now actively engaged in 
"agent technology". Thus the word "agent" by itself generally connotes ISAs in the terms 
of the present-day research community. Delegacy for ISAs is far more absolute. ISAs have 
the capability to generate and implement novel rules of behavior which human beings may 
never have the opportunity or desire to review. As ISAs can engage in extensive logical 
planning and inferencing, the relationship of trust between the client and the agent is or 
must be far greater, especially when the consumption of client resources is committed for 
reasons unexplained or multiple complex operations are actuated before human observers 
can react. 

Competency as practiced by ISAs adds higher order functionality to the mix of capabilities.
In addition to communicating with their environment to collect data and actuate changes, 
ISAs can often analyze the information to find non-obvious or hidden patterns, extracting 
knowledge from raw data. Environmental modes of interaction are richer, incorporating the 
media of humans such as natural language text, speech, and vision. 

Amenability in ISAs can include self-monitoring of achievement toward client goals 
combined with continuous, online learning to improve performance. Adaptive mechanisms 
in ISAs mean that they are far less brittle to changes in environment and may actually 
improve. In addition, client responsiveness may go so far as to infer what a client wants 
when the client himself does not know or cannot adequately express the desired goals in 
definitive terms.