An AI question and a UI question

I've been working on my RLG, Fugue, for the past few years, and while
it hasn't reached the megalomaniacal ambitions of Armok, it's pretty
hefty for a first try.  Ok, now that I've covered that, here's the
problem.  I'm looking at doing this with some neural nets in
strategically placed locations in the AI so that it won't be brain
dead.  Unfortunately, I've been trying to deal with the problem of
evaluating the current situation.

I can't figure out how to teach a computer what's a bad situation. 
Should I just do it the old-fashioned way?  I was thinking of having
it determine what to do based on how close to death it is, with
perfect health being 1 and dead being 0.  A .5 would be so-so, and a
.01 would be pretty much worm food.  We can determine status through
various things like HP, status effects like blindness, and maybe
hunger.  I'm trying to think of some way of determining how well the
creature is doing by some sort of formula.  Maybe Current HP/Max HP *
1 if the creature can see, .5 if it's blind, and so on.  I don't know
what good values are for the weights, so I'd like a learning method if
possible.  Any ideas?

Secondly, what's a good way to do output if I'm using Java?  I'm sort
of leaning towards Swing, although formatted text in that is slow, and
graphics can be even worse.  It seems that the only universally
accepted graphics output methods are pathologically slow.  My options
aren't that great.

My current best bet is to use a table of monospaced formatted letters.
 To keep from having to redraw each cell, I'd have the whole level map
in a scrollable pane, with the pane centered on the character's cell. 
The problem being that the current text renderer doesn't have that
functionality, and I'm not sure how to add it.  Also, I can't seem to
exactly control cell size, something I need to make this work
properly.

My other option is to do it by throwing bitmaps up on the screen.  I
don't really have an idea on how to make it work well.  I'd need the
letter masks as well as some way to quickly put them on the screen.  I
want to be able to have the output ready in about the time it would
take an average computer to write to the screen.  Any place that I can
get the masks without having to make them myself?

Thanks in advance.

-- Paul