I think the idea or methodology is something along the line of one starts with the local models then when they hit a wall then continue with their current results in a frontier model, thus the other half is those last bits one could not compute locally.

We could probably get the same results by offloading 20% of obviously smaller / simpler / well defined tasks to smaller models and keep the 80% for ones that benefit from the big iron. Not the 80/20 they were referring to, but still it's something.

I find myself wasting time on smaller models or wasting money on frontier models. I only have so much of either.