The current application is directed to intelligent controllers that initially aggressively learn, and then continue, in a steady-state mode, to monitor, learn, and modify one or more control schedules that specify a desired operational behavior of a device, machine, system, or organization controlled by the intelligent controller. An intelligent controller generally acquires one or more initial control schedules through schedule-creation and schedule-modification interfaces or by accessing a default control schedule stored locally or remotely in a memory or mass-storage device. The intelligent controller then proceeds to learn, over time, a desired operational behavior for the device, machine, system, or organization controlled by the intelligent controller based on immediate-control inputs, schedule-modification inputs, and previous and current control schedules, encoding the desired operational behavior in one or more control schedules and/or sub-schedules.