Elementary school genius hopes to be America’s Favorite Student

Published 1:30 am Tuesday, April 21, 2026

His dad calls him a genius.

He may be onto something because Jet Lai, an Oak Harbor 10-year-old, is already taking college-level courses through an adult-only online program.

The fourth grader, who attends Oak Harbor Elementary School, is in the running for America’s Favorite Student, a nation-wide online campaign presented by Bill Nye. Jet is currently first in his group.

The student is also working his way through a Google AI Skills curriculum, the kind with a strict users 18 and older policy, earning college credits along the way. To make a stronger impact, Jet even shares his learning from his lessons to his Youtube channel @Jetsfoodadventures, where he also showcases his love for food.

At the same time, Jet is building his own artificial intelligence tools from home. He designed two AI agents from his home desktop.

“It uses Grok AI 270 IQ with a microphone and text to speech function,” he wrote to a News-Times reporter who was a bit perplexed.

Meanwhile he is also in the experimental phase with his “Jet Car AI,” which also uses Grok. This renders cars to be part of a realistic driving game with almost-limitless possibilities.

“It generates node patterns and textures of the car and makes deform-able panels to put into a BeamNG drive file to be in the game,” Jet said.

While tools like Grok operate on massive systems, Jet keeps his work on his home device, but he dreams that someday his AI agents will be able to help people all over the world solve real problems in space exploration, by controlling rocket ships from Earth, for example.

He said he learned to code with help from Co-pilot. Beyond coding, Jet is driven by a bigger goal.

“I would love to be America’s Favorite Student because I really want to be one of those people that shapes the future, like that generation changes everything type guy,” he said.

Winning the competition would earn him $20,000, a slot in Reader’s Digest and a tour of The Planetary Society with Nye.

His interests stretches far beyond the classroom.

“He’s crazy into anything science-related,” his dad, Andrew Lai said.

Jet dittoed that statement.

“I just like being a knowledgeable person. Like, I want to be a very helpful person,” he said.

That curiosity shows up in everything from AI projects to science trivia.

“Did you know that Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis is a lung disease from inhaling fine silicon particles or like very fine ash grains?” he asked the News-Times. The reporter did not, in fact, know that.

At home, his dad sees the decision to choose Jet as America’s Favorite Student as a clear choice.

“I think he’s one of the smartest 10 year olds that a lot of people have ever met,” Andrew said.

Jet’s 13 year-old sister, Genelia Lai, echoed her support for her brother.

“I think people should vote for him because, yeah, he is really funny and he’s cared about science like his whole entire life,” she said. “He really loves this.”

Vote for Jet to be an America’s Favorite Student finalist at americasfavstudent.org/2026/jet.