As someone who was incredibly lazy intellectually in high school, I can't imagine what would have got me motivated beyond time and growing up.
I did nothing in high school and then by 19 for fun on Saturdays I was checking out 5 non-fiction books from the library and spending all Saturday reading.
There was no inspiring teacher or anything like that for me that caused this. At 16 I only cared about girls and maneuvering within the high school social order.
The only thing I can think of that would have changed things for me is if the math club were the cool kids and the football team were the outcasts.
At 16 anything intellectual seemed too remote to bother. That is why I would suspect the real variable is ultimately how much the parents care about grades. Mine did not care at all so there was no way my 16 year old self was going to become intrinsically motivated to grow intellectually.
All AI would have done for me in high school would have been swapping a language model for copying my friend's homework.