TY - JOUR T1 - Comparing Intrinsic Interpretability and Post-Hoc Explanations: An Empirical Study across Multiple Datasets AU - Pierre Dubois AU - Marc Lefevre AU - Claire Moreau AU - Julien Martin AU - Thomas Dupont JF - Journal of Trustworthy and Explainable Intelligent Systems JO - J Trustworthy Explain Intell Syst Y1 - 2025 VL - 4 IS - 1 SP - 58 N2 - In recent years, considerable attention has been directed toward clarifying complex, opaque systems, commonly referred to as black-box models, including deep neural networks and random forests. So-called model-agnostic techniques generally approximate the outputs of these non-transparent systems using an interpretable architecture, ignoring the internal mechanisms of the primary black-box system itself. Consequently, it remains an important inquiry whether the straightforward training of transparent, white-box architectures ought to be favored over the post-hoc approximation of these opaque models. This study presents the findings of an empirical investigation comparing post-hoc explanatory methods against inherently interpretable architectures across multiple datasets, focusing on both rule-based and feature-based frameworks. The empirical outcomes indicate that directly trained transparent models frequently approximate black-box models with an accuracy that matches or exceeds that of post-hoc surrogate models, despite lacking direct access to the underlying black-box structure. UR - https://tipublications.com/r221092846 ER -