The first recorded use seems to be by Stan Ulam in 1958, who was paraphrasing John von Neumann: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19940022856/downloads/199400

The first recorded use seems to be by Stan Ulam in 1958, who was paraphrasing John von Neumann: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19940022856/downloads/19940022856.pdf https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19940022856/downloads/19... “One conversation centered on the ever accelerating progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue.”