常识知识库是当代智能系统或智能代理所具备的一种知识库。它是解决人工智能或知识工程技术瓶颈难题的一项关键措施，其特点是数量上规模大。早期人工智能或知识工程系统所具备的领域知识库是另一种知识库。也就是说，领域知识库和常识知识库是智能计算机系统所具备的知识库的两种基本类型。计算机科学领域普遍认为领域知识库和常识知识库是人工智能或知识工程技术瓶颈难题。从早期关注专家的领域知识到现在同时关注常识知识，这是人工智能或知识工程技术的一种进步。由于计算机硬件和软件以及数据库乃至数据仓库及其人机交互界面等技术的不断成熟，使得人们在21世纪开发各种专家系统所需要的各个中等规模的领域知识库和开发常识系统所需要的大规模的常识知识库都具备了基础条件。

In artificial intelligence research, commonsense knowledge is the collection of facts and information that an ordinary person is expected to know. The commonsense knowledge problem is the ongoing project in the field of knowledge representation (a sub-field of artificial intelligence) to create a commonsense knowledge base: a database containing all the general knowledge that most people possess, represented in a way that it is available to artificial intelligence programs that use natural language or make inferences about the ordinary world. Such a database is a type of ontology of which the most general are called upper ontologies.