The advent of Artificial intelligence (AI) technology is catalyzing significant transformations in human work dynamics. Nonetheless, there exists no unanimous consensus among researchers regarding whether organizational AI adoption has a favorable or unfavorable impact on employees' career development. Building upon social cognitive theory, we explores the underlying mechanism through which organizational AI adoption influences employees' proactive career behavior. A three-wave time-lagged survey involving 348 employees from three hotels and five advanced manufacturing enterprises in Chengdu, China, was conducted. The findings revealed that organizational AI adoption led to a reduction in employees' self-perceived employability. The prominence of an employee's future work self-salience was found to be a determining factor in how their self-perceived employability influenced proactive career behaviors. Specifically, this impact manifested negative for employees exhibiting high levels of future work self-salience, while it appears positive for those with low levels. Finally, this study confirmed the moderating role of future work self-salience in the indirect impact of organizational AI adoption on proactive career behavior through self-perceived employability. Our study underscores the significance of considering individual characteristics, such as future work self-salience, in analyzing how organizational AI adoption affects employees' career-related behaviors.