Papers › Benchmarking Instance-Centric Counterfactual Algorithms for XAI: From White Box to Black Box
Benchmarking Instance-Centric Counterfactual Algorithms for XAI: From White Box to Black Box
Catarina Moreira, Yu-Liang Chou, Chihcheng Hsieh, Chun Ouyang, Joaquim Jorge, João Madeiras Pereira
This study investigates the impact of machine learning models on the generation of counterfactual explanations by conducting a benchmark evaluation over three different types of models: a decision tree (fully transparent, interpretable, white-box model), a random forest (semi-interpretable, grey-box model), and a neural network (fully opaque, black-box model). We tested the counterfactual generation process using four algorithms (DiCE, WatcherCF, prototype, and GrowingSpheresCF) in the literature in 25 different datasets. Our findings indicate that: (1) Different machine learning models have little impact on the generation of counterfactual explanations; (2) Counterfactual algorithms based uniquely on proximity loss functions are not actionable and will not provide meaningful explanations; (3) One cannot have meaningful evaluation results without guaranteeing plausibility in the counterfactual generation. Algorithms that do not consider plausibility in their internal mechanisms will lead to biased and unreliable conclusions if evaluated with the current state-of-the-art metrics; (4) A counterfactual inspection analysis is strongly recommended to ensure a robust examination of counterfactual explanations and the potential identification of biases.
Code
Repository list and official/mentioned flags are the archive's, frozen 2025-07-28. Reachability, where shown, is from one Syntology probe window (2026-09-16 to 2026-09-18); repositories not probed show nothing. GitHub stars are not tracked.
Code Syntology ran Syntology
Not run by Syntology. Nothing on this page verifies that the listed code works.
Tasks
1 archive task tag without a task page not shown.
Results from the paper archive 2025-07-28
No leaderboard rows for this paper in the archive.
Report a problem or propose a change · a person checks every report against the paper or source before anything changes; decisions are listed on /corrections